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IS DARWIN RIGHT?

OR,

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

WILLIAM DENTON,

AUTHOR OF "our PLANET," " SOUL OF THINGS," "GENESIS
AND GEOLOGY," ETC.

WELLESLEY, MASS.:
DENTON PUBLISHING COMPANY.

1882.

Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, St" Co.,
IJJ Franklin Street, Boston.

INTRODUCTION.

In this volume I present to the public substantially
what I have been presenting in my lectures for more than
twenty-five years, giving here, however, greater promi-
nence to the spiritual origin of man ; for the question of
man's natural origin is generally decided in the affirma-
tive, and the great question now is as to the means by
which the result was naturally produced. The writino-s
of Lyell taught me in youth that the present condition
of our planet is the result, not of miracuk)us achieve-
ment a few thousand years ago, but of the operation of
natural causes during many millions of years. The
"Vestiges of Creation" first led me to believe in man's
natural origin ; and my own investigations in mesmer-
ism, spiritualism, and psychometry, showed me the de-
fectiveness of the theories advanced by Darwin, Huxley,
and others of the natural selection school. Nobler men
do not live than some of them are in many respects ;
but when they seek to account for the existence of all
organic forms, and entirely ignore the spiritual side of the
universe, infinitely its most important side, their theories

4 INTRODUCTION.

cannot be otherwise than most radically defective. Sci-
entific men run in ruts, as theologians so generally do :
hence the popularity of Darwinism to-day. But, with a
knowledge of the spiritual in the universe and in man,
there will come a great modification of the views of
naturalists regarding the origin of organic forms.

This work is written for the general reading public, and
is made as plain as possible, that the average reader may
understand its arguments, which I shall be very glad to
see overthrown if they are not in agreement with abso-
lute truth.

Twenty-two years ago I had a discussion with Mr. Gar-
field, now president-elect, on the subject of man's origin,
many false reports of which have been published in some
of his biographies, and in campaign documents in various
Republican papers. In some of these I was represented
as an atheist ; one who was completely discomfited,
but who sought during the debate to inveigle his oppo-
nent into the discussion of subjects not related to the
matter in debate. Every statement is utterly false. In
that debate I took the affirmative of the following propo-
sition : " Man, animals, and vegetables are the product
of spontaneous generation and progressive development ;
and there is no evidence that there was any direct crea-
tive act on this planet." Mr. Garfield took the negative,
which required him to present evidence of direct creative
action : this he neither did, nor attempted to do. If Mr.

INTRODUCTION. 5

Garfield then believed in man's miraculous origin, as
given in the book from which he took the texts for his
sermons, he did not choose to defend it, for reasons best
known to himself; if he did not believe it, he stood before
the public in a very false position. Nearly or quite every
argument used by me in the twenty speeches made in
that debate are given in this volume, to which Mr. Gar-
field was utterly unable satisfactorily to reply, and to
which, I venture to say, neither he nor his friends can
now reply.

I trust the time will come in our Republic when it will
not be considered necessary to lie, either to vilify or
glorify a candidate for its presidency.

WILLIAM DENTON.
Wellesley, Mass., Dec. 5, 1880.

CONTENTS.

MAN'S NATURAL ORIGIN.

Natural Laws 17-46

Vitality 17-26

Variation 26-28

Tendency 28-30

Hereditary Transmission 30-32

Modification 32-39

Symmetry 39-41

Natural Selection 41-46

Pointers indicating Man's Natural Origin.

Metamorphosis of Animals 46-58

Anatomical Similarity ' 58-61

Linking Forms 61-65

Rudimentary Organs 66-70

Paleontological Resemblance 70-72

Geological Succession 72-74

Insular Organic Resemblance 74-76

Antiquity of Man 76-91

Brutal Characteristics 9^-97

Objections to Man's Natural Origin . . . 97-115

8 CONTENTS.

MAN'S SPIRITUAL ORIGIN.

Pointers indicating Man's Spiritual Origin . ii 5-187

Man-ward Progress of Our Planet . . . 116-133

The Race Development of Animals . . . 133-136

Organic Distribution 136-146

Persistency of Type 146-155

Multiplicity of Human Origins .... 155-167

Language 167-176

Tendency to Beauty 176-178

Human Faculties 178-179

Spiritual Faculties • . 179-187

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

MAN'S NATURAL ORIGIN.

We live in a world teeming with life. On the moun-
tain-top, where winter reigns forever, with only snow for
mould, there grow luxuriantly beautiful organic forms ;
the deep sea caves, illuminated only by the light that has
struggled through a thousand fathoms of water, are
crowded with tenants ; sixteen hundred feet below the
surface of the ground, in the darksome mine, lighted
only by the occasional glimmer of a miner's candle, grow
snow-white fungi on the massive timbers that support the
shelving roof. Vegetable life : the pine clothing the
mountain-side, the ash in the swamp, the chestnut on
the ridge, the feathery palm, grass rolling in verdant
waves, the fringing fern, the carpeting moss, the clinging
lichen. Animal life : the humped buffalo feeding on the
prairie, the lion lurking in the jungle, bears berrying
among the bushes, sea-fowl overshadowing the rocky islet

lo IS DARWIN RIGHT?

like a cloud, seals scrambling over the rocks, and fishes
in shoals moving through the waters. Life within life :
animalcules everywhere, too small to be seen by the
unassisted eye, but feeding on every leaf, and swimming
in every drop. Man, monarch of all, inquiring. Whence
these various living forms, and how came I into exist-
ence? One of the first questions of lisping infancy, and
often the subject of greatest interest to the aged sage.

Answers to these questions, however numerous, range
themselves into two divisions ; those of the one ascrib-
ing all organic existences to the operation of natural law,
and the other to miracle. There is nothing that the
study of natural science so profoundly impresses upon
the human mind as the universality and continuous oper-
ation of law. The more we become familiar with the
heavens and the earth, the more clearly we see their
varied phenomena to be the offspring of natural causes :
indeed, the very existence of our planet and of similar
bodies in space is now generally attributed to their
action. Herschel, La Place, Comte, Humboldt, Mitch-
ell, Agassiz, and, indeed, almost every scientific person
familiar with the discoveries of astronomy and the facts
of geology, have been led to believe that our planet, as
well as the whole solar and astral systems, came into their
present form by the operation of law.

Whirled from the sun probably, as drops are from a
revolving grindstone, our planet was, by the law of grav-

OK, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. \\

itation, moulded into its present shape. As it cooled, a
rocky crust formed upon its surface by the operation of
the law of cohesion, which binds particles of matter
together and forms solid bodies. Thus ice is produced
in winter, and rock from the liquid vomited out of
the volcano. In that rocky crust we find hundreds of
minerals, produced by the law of chemical affinity, which
unites unlike particles of matter, and by their union pro-
duces new substances. Oxygen, an invisible gas, and
calcium, a yellowish-white metal, combine, and form
lime ; lime and sulphuric acid unite, and produce gyp-
sum ; oxygen and silicon are changed into silica, which
we see in the form of quartz and flint, and the more
precious forms of agate, amethyst, and opal. Many of
the minerals thus formed are in symmetrical shapes, such
as cubes, octagons, and hexagonal prisms \ and in them
we see the operation of another law, that of crystalliza-
tion, by which mineral atoms, under favorable condi-
tions, arrange themselves in beautiful order, so that when
the substance is known, and the conditions surrounding
it, we can tell with certainty the shape that it will assume.
When we thus learn that law has been operating for
millions of years, rounding the globe, forming its crust,
producing the various minerals that constitute the sub-
stance of that crust, and shaping them into symmetrical
forms, what more natural than to believe that the domain
of law extends over the organic productions that sue-

12 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

ceeded these? The operation of cohesion depends
upon the previous operation of gravitation ; for, unless
gravitation brought the particles of matter near, cohesion
could not bind them ; the operation of chemical affinity,
in the production of mineral substances, depends upon
the previous operation of cohesion ; no lime could be
formed by the union of oxygen and calcium, if cohesion
had not first brought the particles of calcium together ;
neither could crystallization produce its forms, unless the
other laws had pre-existed and pre-operated. Hence we
have a natural pyramid, of which gravitation is the base,
and crystallization the summit.

If these are all natural, if no miraculous agency is
concerned in their manifestation, why, when we advance
but a step beyond, should we drag in miracle to account
for what we behold? Immediately above crystallization
is vegetable and animal life ; above organic life, sensa-
tion ; and above sensation, reason ; and why may not
these additions to the pyramid be just as natural as the
underlying courses?

Where shall we call in miracle to aid in its erection ?
There seems to be no greater step from crystallization as
seen on a window-pane in a frosty morning, or in the
dendritic forms which the oxide of manganese occa-
sionally assumes (Figs, i to 3), to the simplest forms of
life, such as the jelly-like amoeba, than there is from the
amorphous mass of quartz which cohesion produces, to

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 13

the transparent hexagonal prism, which is the product of
crystalHzation.

Why should we consider the crystal, with its gleaming
sides, to be natural, — the product of law, — and call in
the supernatural to account for a being so low in the scale
of existence that it does not even possess a stomach, and
appears to be as simple in structure as a drop of gum ?

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3.

Fig. I. Dendrite on Slate; 2. Dendrite on Chert; 3. Dendrite on Sienite.
(Original.)

Breathe on the window-pane on a cold winter's morn-
ing, and mark the result. Obedient to the law of crystal-
lization, see how those particles of frozen moisture range
themselves in beautiful order ! No regiment ever moved
at the word of command with greater precision, no tree
ever leafed or blossomed into more perfect beauty, than
these arborescent crystals, that, but for their frequent
appearance, would astonish and delight us. Examine

/S DARWIN RIGHT?

the snow-flakes that drop by milHons at our feet (Fig. 4).
When particles were first arranged into an organic being,
is it not probable that the process was just as natural in
that case as in the others?

Nearly all intelligent persons now acknowledge that
the rocks composing the earth's crust were formed by the
operation of natural law ; granitic rocks by the slow cool-
ing of fiery fluid matter under pressure ; metamorphic

Fig. 4. Snow-Flakes.

rocks from the decomposition and disintegration of the
granitic, and the re-formation and crystallization of the
material ; and the fossiliferous rocks by the agency of
water, and the assistance of plants and animals.

No person at all acquainted with geology now believes
that seas, rivers, lakes, and mountains were made by
miracle, though this notion was once very common. In
accordance with law, the mountains were heaved, the
ocean's bed hollowed, the valleys formed ; by its opera-
tion we have sunlight and darkness, thunder, lightning,
and storms ; by it rivers run, oceans ebb and flow, and

OK, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 15

the wide domain of life is under its continual jurisdic-
tion.

But a few years ago the thunder's roll in the heavens
was the voice of a personal deity ; the lightning's flash
was the glare of his angry eye ; the tornado, that found a
paradise before it and left a desert behind it, was the
blast of his nostrils ; and the earthquake, that swallowed
a city at a gulp, was his agent to punish a guilty peo-
ple. Now, back of the lightning and thunder, we dis-
cover the electricity that goes up with the ascending
vapor : the intensely heated atmosphere precedes the
hurricane, and beneath the earthquake lies the cooling
globe. The oil that we burn in our lamps, the coal we
consume in our stoves, the salt, the iron, the silver, and
the gold, were all deposited where we find them by natu-
ral causes. From the rounded acorn, a hundred of
which may be carried in the pocket, grows by impercepti-
ble degrees the oak, whose branches overspread an acre ;
and from an almost invisible tgg a Lyell is developed,
who reveals the secrets of the earth's deep foundations,
and a Humboldt, before whom the whole scientific realm
lies hke a map. And though provinces of nature have
been repeatedly set aside, and we have been solemnly
assured that they were exceptions to the rule, yet, as
science has advanced, these have become so narrowed,
we may be sure that universal intelligence will make all
men eventually believers in the universal operation of
natural law.

1 6 IS DARWIN RIG II r?

These laws are, as I believe, but the modes of opera-
tion of an unseen, but ever present, ever active, and
what, for want of a better word, we must call intelligent,
spirit ; but a spirit which, as far as we can tell by our
own experience and that of our fellows, operates invaria-
bly by law : and it is therefore most reasonable to suppose
that all forms of life, including man, have come into
existence by natural processes, which we may reasonably
suppose are still at work upon our globe.

The great mistake that many scientists as well as theo-
logians appear to me to make, is in supposing that this is
a dead world, in a dead universe, and only made alive by
the operation of some exterior force. Darwin thinks that
all living beings came from one or a few forms, " into
which life was first breathed ; " thus giving us a dead
world, into which an exterior power breathed life. If
this was ever done, the great probability is that life was
breathed into a man. Why should a miracle-worker
bridge the chasm between death and life for an invisible
monad, when the bridge would just as easily carry a
man ?

The difference between the universe such persons be-
lieve in, and that in which we live, is great as the differ-
ence between a natural tree and an artificial one. In the
artificial tree, made in a day, a wooden trunk is fashioned,
holes are bored, limbs inserted, twigs put into them, and
leaves and fruit attached. It may appear beautiful ; but

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 17

there is no life in its heart, no sap in its branches, no
circulation through its leaves. It is no more a tree than
the chair in which its maker sits. The natural tree re-
quires centuries for its perfection, but it is alive from
deepest radicle to topmost leaf. Break a branch, and
every rootlet feels and resp)onds to the demand for mate-
rial to repair damages. Day and night the living currents
flow through its veins, bearing color to the blossom, honey
to its cup, sugar to the fruit, and down for its cheek to
ward off the attacks of the insect robber. Strip off every
leaf, and it re-clothes itself; -and, though winter makes it
bare a hundred times, a hundred times it renews its
beauty. No less alive is the world in which we dwell,
and the universe of Avhich it forms to us such an impor-
tant part ; and it is this that rendered man a possibility
upon our planet.

NATURAL LAWS.

YITALriY.

The first agent that appears to have been, and to be
concerned in the production of living beings, is Vitality.
As there is a crystallizing force, that under favorable
conditions produces crystals, without preceding crystallic
germs from which they grew, so there appears to be
a life-producing force, which, from what some call
"dead matter," under favorable circumstances produces

1 8 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

animals and vegetables in their simplest forms. Philip
Henry Gosse, the well-known English naturalist, says,
" If we take a bunch of leaves^ of the common sage for
example, or a few twigs of hay, and, tying them into a
bundle, suspend them in a jar of water, allowing the con-
tents to remain untouched, but exposed to the air, some
interesting results will follow. If we examine it on the
second day we shall find a sort of scum covering the sur-
face, and the whole fluid becoming turbid and slightly
tinged with green. If now we take with the point of a
quill or pin a minute drop pf this liquid, and examine it
with a good microscope under a magnifying power of
about two hundred diameters, we discover the water to
be swarming with animal life."

Wherever we place organic substances in decay, if the
air in never so small a quantity can get at them, living
beings will be produced. The common supposition is
that germs or eggs floating in the atmosphere (frop into
the vegetable infusions, and there find conditions favor-
able for their development. This is of course possible :
it is even probable. To know whether they do, or not,
has been the aim of a great many distinguished experi-
menters, who are about equally divided in opinion.

In July, 1862, Professor Wyman of Harvard College,
Cambridge, published in " The American Journal of
Science " the results of thirty-seven experiments, under-
taken for the purpose of determining whether living

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 19

beings could be developed in a closely-sealed vessel,
where previously neidier life nor the germs of life existed.

The juice of beef and mutton, solutions of sugar and
gelatine, and some other substances, were used in these
experiments. In all of them the juice and solutions
were exposed to the heat of boiling water, and in four of
them to a heat of from 250° to 307°, or from 38° to 95°
above the boihng-point, from fifteen minutes to two
hours. In some cases the necks of the glass vessels con-
taining the solutions were heated red-hot and twisted
round before the exposure to the heat ; and in others,
after boiling, the air was allowed to pass into the vessels
through an iron tube filled with wires heated to red-
ness, or through a glass tube filled with asbestos and
platinum-sponge red-hot ; so that if any living germs had
existed in the air they would have been destroyed in their
passage. After being thus filled with air, these latter
vessels were also hermetically sealed, and left in a warm
apartment.

In the course of a few days or weeks, life was found
in all of them except two, and even in one that was
heated to 307°, which is far beyond what experiment has
demonstrated to be the limit of vital endurance.

Professor Clark of Harvard College, who gives a de-
tailed account of these experiments, says, ^'' The fact that
the experiments with the sealed flasks proved, if any
thing can be proved beyond the reach of change or

20 ZS- DARWIN RIGHT?

improvement, is that beings with motion, undoubted
living beings, were produced where life could not have
existed previously.^ No failures to obtain living beings
under any circumstances can overthrow the evidences of
spontaneous generation furnished by such experiments as
these.

More recently Dr. Bastian has experimented under
conditions still more unfavorable. He placed boiling

^ \'^\^'^ -°-°'^

oo
o

® ^5^'''^» ^'^

Fig. s. Some of the most common forms of life, supposed to have been produced
spontaneously: Bacteria, Torulce, &c., 8oo times the natural size. (After
Bastian.)

solutions of sugar, carbonate of ammonia, phosphate of
soda, and turnip-juice, in glass vessels ; and, while the
steam from them was issuing from the necks of the ves-
sels, they were hermetically sealed, and placed in an iron
digester, where they were exposed for four hours to a
heat of 295° Fahrenheit. Yet even under these extreme

* Mind in Nature, p. a6.

0R\ THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

conditions minute organic forms were found in the liquids
after a few days ^ (Figs. 5 and 6).

Professor Cantoni of Pavia has obtained infusoria in
the fluids of hermetically sealed flasks, after an exposure
in a Papin's digester to a temperature of 242° F.^

Some remarks of Mr. Wallace regarding the experi-
ments of Bastian, detailed in his " Beginnings of Life,"
are valuable. " Some of these comparative experiments
are very suggestive. Hay infusion, for instance, exposed

Fig. 6. Bacteria, Toruhe, and other infusoria, found in an infusion of commoa
cress, in an air-tight flask, after it was heated to 272° F. for twenty minutes.
Magnified 800 times. (After F)astian.)

to air, produced abundance of bacteria in forty-eight
hours, and these had increased considerably in sixty-
eight hours. A similar infusion, sealed up after the
fluid became cold, behaved in a similar manner. The
same in a flask with a neck two feet long, and having
eight flexures, remained unchanged for twelve days. A
similar infusion, hermetically sealed during ebullition, on
the other hand, showed turbidity in forty- eight hours,

1 Beginnings of Life, vol. i., pp. 456-475. ^ Beginnings of Life, vol. i., p. 436.

22 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

which subsequently increased, and bacteria, vibriones,
leptothrix, and torulce were found in abundance. Here,
then, whatever inference may be drawn from the first
three experiments is entirely negatived by the fourth.
Other experiments show that ammonia-tartrate solution,
sealed in vacuo, at a temperature of 90° F., produced in
eighty-four hours abundance of bacteria ; while the same
solution, if boiled at 212° F., and exposed to the air in
flasks covered with paper caps, remained quite clear for
nine days ; yet as soon as it was inoculated with living
bacteria, they increased rapidly, and produced turbidity.
These, and a number of other equally suggestive experi-
ments, indicate that the conditions favorable to the oiigin
and to the increase of these low forms, are not always
identical. Both are very complex ; and we cannot avoid
the conclusion that the advocates of the universal germ
theory have been somewhat hasty in founding their doc-
trine upon insufiicient data, for the most part of a nega-
tive character."

Thousands of experiments have been tried, first and
last, to settle this question whether living beings are pro-
duced without parentage ; yet, in the estimation of many
eminent scientists, it remains undecided yet. Pasteur,
Tyndall, Huxley, and others, do not believe we have any
evidence of life without pre-existent life to produce it ;
while on the other side we have Bastian, the author of
"The Beginnings of Life," Clark, Wyman, some of whose

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 23

experiments have been given, Draper, the well-known
physiologist, Wallace, and Owen, the greatest hving com-
parative anatomist.

The fact that life abounds wherever conditions are
favorable for its development, that even hot springs have
their tenants, that every island is peopled, and every lake
and stream has living forms adapted to its waters, indi-
cates that life as naturally develops by virtue of inherent
law, as crystals, under favorable conditions, from mineral
solutions.

In the production of crystals we see many of the
phenomena which are displayed in the production and
growth of organized beings. All crystals are formed
of small, angular solids, as all organized bodies are of
cells. There has been a germ controversy regarding the
formation of crystals, as there is now one regarding the
formation of living beings ; some chemists supposing
that minute crystals floating in the air were the cause of
crystallization in mineral solutions.^ As animals can be
modified by surrounding conditions, so can crystals.
" Common salt usually crystallizes in the form of a cube ;
but, if urine be present in the solution, it takes the fonii
of the octahedron."- When carbonate of lime is slowly
precipitated in viscid solutions of gum, instead of the
particles arranging themselves in octahedral or hexagonal
crystals, the combined particles assume the form of

* Beginnings of Life, vol. i., p. 300. ^ Youmans' New Chemistry, p. 50.

24 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

calculi, with distinct concentric layers. Crystals can
even make repairs, so that when an angle is broken, it
will be replaced. Mr. Rainey, quoted by Bastian,^ tells
us of the appearance of the first visible globules, when
carbonate of lime is precipitated in a viscid solution.
" The appearance which is first visible is a faint cloudi-
ness ; the particles are too small to be seen by the micro-
scope ; in a few hours exquisitely minute globes appear,
too small to be measured, then dumb-bell-like bodies
and egg-shaped particles with them, and these gradually
enlarge." In fact, the appearances are at first almost
identical with those that are seen in vegetable infusions,
as organisms gradually form in them.

Tyndall's experiments seem to many persons to de-
monstrate that all living beings must come from germs.
He placed in sixty glass flasks an infusion of turnip-juice.
The ends of the flasks were drawn out to a fine point ;
and, after the infusion had boiled for five minutes, the
small end was closed by melting the glass with a blow-
pipe. They were taken to the Alps, in Switzerland, in
the month of July. The ends of four of them had been
broken on the way, and these were full of life ; the rest,
except two that were destroyed, were all clear. The fifty-
four were exposed to the sun by day, and placed in a warm
kitchen at night : four were casually broken, but the fifty
remained perfectly clear ; there was no life in them.

1 Beginnings of Life, vol. i., p. 303.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 25

Then twenty-three of the fifty were opened in a hay-loft,
and the remaining twenty-seven on the edge of a diff
overlooking a glacier. All the flasks were then placed in
a warm situation near a stove, with the necks open ;
and in three days twenty-one out of the twenty-three
opened in the hay-loft were filled with living beings ;
while after three weeks those opened near the glacier
were without a trace of life.

It is evident that in this case there was something in
the air of the hay-loft that was favorable to the develop-
ment of life ; but it by no means follows that this con-
sisted of germs or eggs. The experiments of Wyman,
Mantagazzi, Bastian, and a host of others, many of
whom have had much more practice than Tyndall, who
have found living beings in sealed glass vessels after they
had been exposed to a heat much more than sufficient to
kill germs if they had existed, can never be negatived by
such experiments as Tyndall's, were they multipHed a
thousand-fold.

In the flask of the experimental philosopher to-day we
have, apparently, on a small scale, what existed on the
earth during the early geologic periods on a large scale ;
and, if living beings are produced to-day by the opera-
tion of natural causes, there is no need to call in miracle
to account for their appearance long ago.

It may be objected that there existed no juice of beef
or mutton, infusions of vegetable matter, nor solutions of

26 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

minerals produced from organic substances, in the early
condition of our planet, as there were in the sealed flasks
of the experimenters. True ; but there were warm
oceans, containing matter in an extremely fine state of
subdivision from the action of water on rock for ages,
and containing as much life as infusions do when sub-
jected for hours to a heat of 295°. The Hquids in the
flasks, we may reasonably suppose, are only favorable to
the development of life, because they give us the neces-
sary components of organic bodies in an extremely
divided state. In both cases the matter is destitute of
life ; and the production of living beings in unorganized
matter, to-day, reveals to us, apparently, how it came
into existence in the beginning.

VARIATION.

Vital force, however, appears only to produce life in
extremely minute forms ; and these, by the ordinary
process of generation, could only continue to produce
similar forms. There must have been a power and a
disposition to deviate from the original stock, or the first
living beings would have perpetuated only forms similar
to themselves, and filled the world forever. But there is
in nature a disposition to vary, or a law of Variation.
We say like produces like ; and this is true, but like pro-
duces unlike, also : the boy is like his father ; but no boy
is exactly like his father, nor girl like her mother ; and in

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 27

most large families, and some small ones, there will be a
child of whom the father asks, "Who does that child
take after ? I am sure it is no one on our side of the
house ; " and the mother is equally sure that it is no one
on her side of the house. A variation in the offspring
has made its appearance, for which the progenitors are
unable to account. The seeds of apples and peaches,
as we know, produce fruits that differ from those of the
parent trees. By taking advantage of the tendency in
plants to sport into varieties, our gardeners are constantly
producing new flowers and improved fruits.

Dr. Hooker, quoted by Lyell, says, "The element of
mutability pervades the whole vegetable kingdom ; no
class, no order, nor genus of more than a few species,
claims absolute exemption from it." So strong is the
tendency to variation, that seedlings from fruit of the
same tree and in the same season differ at times consid-
erably. Col. Le Couteur, who paid great attention to
wheat-culture, found that the grains of wheat in the same
ear differed so greatly that he was compelled, in his
attempts to grow the best, to select each grain separately.^
Van Mons, Darwin informs us, " reared a multitude of
varieties from the seed of one grape-vine, which was
completely separated from all others, so that there could
not, at least in this generation, have been any crossing ;
and the seedlings presented the analogues of everv kind,

^ Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p. 378.

2S /S DARWIN RIGHT?

and differed in almost every possible character, both in
the fruit and foliage." ^

In Darwin's Origin of Species we are told of two
flocks of Leicester sheep, kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr.
Burgess, and purely bred from the original stock of Mr.
Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not a
suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all ac-
quainted with the subject, that the owner of either of
them has deviated in any one instance from the pure
blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock ; and yet the difference
between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is
so great that they have the appearance of being quite
different varieties.^

TENDENCY.

We cannot, however, regard variation as a creator. It
may change the color of a snail's shell, but how could it
give to the snail a fin ? it may modify the tail of a fish,
but we cannot conceive of its forming a foot ; in a man
it may give a longer finger or toe, but it could not put an
eye at the end of his finger, or an ear at the end of his
toe. Variation, to be of service in the production of the
higher forms of organic being, from the simple forms
spontaneously produced, must operate in a definite direc-
tion, and there must be underlying it the power to push

^ Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p. 401.
2 Origin of Species, p. 39.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 29

the organic form subject to it to a more advanced stage.
How could an animal destitute of wings vary until it
became a bird? Suppose it to be an amphibian, like a
frog, variation undirected would be as likely to operate in
an infinite variety of ways as in the direction of feathers
and wings. Suppose a variation in a frog in the direction
of the bird, it could hardly fail to be a detriment ; and the
animal in which it appeared, in the struggle for life, would
be more likely to die than to live and perpetuate the
bird-like peculiarity. Pin-feathers on a frog would nei-
ther help it to swim, dive, nor jump ; and, the more
like wings its forelegs were, the less use they would
be in administering to its necessities. If the first step in
the direction of a bird could be taken, for which no
cause can be imagined, how could it be retained till the
chance came among an infinite number of another varia-
tion concurring with the previous one, and pushing the
animal a step nearer to the bird? The chances are
almost -infinite against the possibility of such a second
step being taken. How long, by any hap-hazard process,
would it be before an amphibian was transformed into a
bird ? Millions of concurring steps, balancing each other,
would be necessary ; and it would seem that the whole
time of our planet's life would be exhausted before more
than the merest beginning could be made. Behind
variation must be Tendency. Without the eyes of tend-
ency, variation would wander bhndly in an aimless maze

30 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

forever ; with this for a guide it has unerringly struck the
road to fish and reptile, beast and man. Tendency com-
pels variation, and variation in certain directions ; form-
ing steps by which life advances to the highest forms.

HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION.

But, unless these varieties could be transmitted to the
descendants of their possessors, they would die with them,
and never influence their progeny. Variation has be-
come operative in producing advanced forms of life by
the influence of another law, — that of Hereditary Trans-
mission. The existence of this law is known to nearly
all, but the potency of its influence is known to but few.
An English paper informs us that a man six feet six
inches in height was summoned before a court ; and the
questions asked him on that occasion revealed the fact
that his father was six feet three inches, his mother six
feet, and his four brothers and sisters averaged six feet
three inches.

The Jew has a strongly aquiline nose, and this nose is
represented on the faces of Jews in Egyptian paintings
that are more than three thousand years old. The very
nose that figures on the face of the Jew that walks down
Broadway to-day, adorned the countenance of Abraham
as he sat at the door of his tent in the days of old.

Early in the last century a child was born in Suffolk,
Eng., with semi-horny excrescences of almost half an

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 31

inch in length thickly growing all over his body. The
peculiarity was transmitted to his children, and was last
heard of in a third generation.

The persistence of mental traits, in consequence ap-
parently of the operation of inheritance, is remarkable.
As Ribot remarks, " The French of the nineteenth cen-
tury are, in fact, the Gauls described by Caesar. In the
Commentaries, in Strabo, in Diodorus Siculus, we find all
the essential traits of our national character : love of
arms, taste for every thing that glitters, extreme levity
of mind, incurable vanity, address, great readiness of
speech, and disposition to be carried away by phrases.
There are in Caesar some observations which might have
been written yesterday. 'The Gauls,' says he, 'have a
love of revolution ; they allow themselves to be led by
false reports into acts they afterwards regret, and into
decisions on the most important events ; they are de-
pressed by reverses ; they are as ready to go to war with-
out cause as they are weak and powerless in the hour of
defeat.' " ^

So strong is this law of heredity, that even accidental
variations and artificial deformities are at times trans-
mitted. Ribot tells us that a man whose right hand had
suffered an injury had one of his fingers badly set. He
had several sons, each of whom had the same finger
crooked. He quotes Quatrefages, who tells us that the

1 Heredity, p. no.

32 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Esquimaux cut off the tails of the dogs they harness to
their sledges, and the pups are often born tailless.-^ The
tendency to transmit a perfect form is, however, much
stronger than the tendency to transmit deformities, or
there would be no necessity for the Jew to practise cir-
cumcision, or the descendants of many generations of
shavers to torment their faces with a razor.

By the operation of the law of vitality, the waters of the
early oceans were caused to swarm with minute living
beings. By the law of variation, governed by innate
tendency, these commenced, as soon as they began to
propagate, to deviate from the ancestral form toward
higher organic forms ; and, by the law of heredity, the
deviations were transmitted, and new and more advanced
forms of life came into existence.

The law of hereditary transmission appears at first to
be antagonistic to the law of variation ; for, if it operated
perfectly, there could be no deviation from the parental
form ; but tendency, operating with variation, overrides
heredity, as the power of the magnet upholds its arma-
ture contrary to the operation of gravity.

MODinCATION.

In addition to these is another important law, that of
Modification. A pine that will grow in a temperate cli-
mate to one hundred and fifty feet, on the timber-line of

^ Heredity, p. 9,

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. t^^

the mountains is no higher than a man's head, though its
trunk may be as thick as his body. In the Southern
States the Virginia cherry grows to the height of one
hundred feet, but at the Great Slave Lake it is but five
feet high. The service-tree in Western Virginia is fre-
quently eighty feet high : on the Rocky Mountains, in
Wyoming, it is only a bush. In all these cases, surround-
ing conditions have modified the plant subjected to them.
The cabbage in the West Indies grows to be a small
tree. Animals living in high mountain regions, where the
air is rare, have lungs adapted to the atmosphere they
are compelled to breathe. Men in such countries have
broader shoulders and longer trunks than those living
near the sea-level. Lyell tells us of some Englishmen
who were carrying on mining operations at a high level
in Mexico, who sent to England for greyhounds of the
best breed, that they might hunt the hares which abound-
ed in the country. It was found, however, that, owing to
the rarity of the air, the greyhounds were compelled to
lie down and gasp for breath, while the hares ran off with
ease and left them. But the whelps of these greyhounds,
when grown up, could run down the Mexican hares just
as easily as their progenitors had done English hares ; for
they had become modified to suit the conditions that
surrounded them.^

Of the cabbage and the cauliflower Lyell says, " A bit-

1 Principles of Geology, p. 594.

34 ^S DARWIN RIGHT?

ter plant, with wavy sea-green leaves, has been taken
from the sea-side, where it grew like wild charlock, has
been transplanted into the garden, lost its saltness, and
has been metamorphosed into two distinct vegetables, as
unlike each other as each is to the parent plant, — the
red cabbage and the cauliflower."^ I suppose there are
persons, who, if asked to name which of all the plants was
most likely to have been specially created for the service
of man, would unhesitatingly reply, the cabbage ; and yet
the cabbage has been made by man, out of a plant very
unlike the modified product.

But Lyell remarks, '' It is easy to show that these ex-
traordinary varieties could seldom arise, and could never
be perpetuated in a wild state for many generations, under
any imaginable combination of accidents." They show
the wonderful power of surrounding conditions to mould
the organic forms subjected to them ; and these are suffi-
cient, as we know, to produce differences as great as
those that distinguish species ; but, apart from innate
tendency, it is, I think, extremely difficult to pass beyond
this step in a progressive direction.

All large caves have tenants which have become modi-
fied by the peculiarities of their underground life. Pro-
fessor Schiodte discovered, in three Austrian caves, the
proteus, a wood-louse, and three kinds of beetles, all
blind, or the eyes reduced to rudimentary specks.

^ Principles of Geology, p. 588,

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 35

In the Mammoth Cave is a bhnd fish, which has on
the exterior no visible eyes. We are told by some that
here is evidence demonstrative that all animals were
miraculously formed for the places that they occupy.
The blind-fish was made for the Mammoth Cave ; and
the Creator, knowing that it would live in absolute dark-
ness, made it destitute of eyes. When, however, we ex-
amine the almost transparent blind-fish, we see that this
explanation of its origin does not at all harmonize with
the facts. In the head of the blind-fish, beneath where
its eyes should be, two small dark objects appear under
the skin : these are eyes ; and attached to them is the
optic nerve, leading to the optic lobe of the brain, as in
fishes having full possession of sight. How shall we
account for this? Consider the blind-fish a miraculous
creation, and its peculiar construction can never be ex-
plained. It was evidently modified into its present pecul-
iar form. The Mammoth Cave was hollowed by a stream
that once ran upon the surface, and was occupied by fish,
as our streams are to-day. This stream found a crevice
in the lime-rock, and down it went, introducing its fish to
a life of darkness. Conditions were so unfavorable that
most of them perished, but this survived. For want of
the stimulus of light, the eye became smaller. Tie up
your right arm, and never use it, and it will shrivel to
half the size of the left in a twelvemonth. It transmitted
this diminished eye to its descendants born in this cave ;

36 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

their eyes became smaller still, for want of stimulus, and
retreated into the head ; and, in process of time, the skin
covered the eye, and the blind-fish of the Mammoth
Cave was produced.

Many insects and crustaceans are found in this cave,
in some of which the eyes are absent, and in others they
are reduced to mere specks. Fig. 7 represents a carabid

Fig. 7. Anophthalmus Telkampfii. (After Packard.)

beetle, first found in the Mammoth Cave by Tell Kampf,
from whom it receives its specific name. It is destitute
of wings and totally bhnd, and has doubtless become
wingless and blind in consequence of the disuse of wings
and eyes resulting from its cave life. The Hadenoeais
subterraneus (Fig. 8) is a wingless grasshopper, found
also in the Mammoth Cave. I caught it, or one closely
allied to it, in Wyandotte Cave, Indiana. Its antennae
and legs are proportionally longer than those of its rela-
tions found on the surface, probably because they had to
do duty for eyes. In the Wyandotte Cave of Indiana

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

is also a blind fish, almost, if not absolutely, identical
with that of the Mammoth Cave. The caves are too
far apart for the fishes to have descended from the same
modified progenitors; but the conditions surrounding
them, after they were swept into the respective caves,
being almost identical, they have been modified into
similar beings.

I have seen a tadpole four years old, kept in a drug-

FiG. 8. Hadenoecus Subterraneus. (After Packard.)

gist's store, out of the sunlight : conditions were un-
favorable for its perfect development; and, although a
giant, it was only a gigantic tadpole.

The notornis and the apteryx are small, wingless birds,
found in New Zealand ; and the dinornis, palapteryx and
aptornis were wingless birds that once lived there, but are
now only known by their fossil remains. These birds,
living in a country where beasts that might prey upon
them were unknown, and where flight was unnecessary

38 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

for food, their wings were so little employed that they
became too small for flight, and by disuse have so dimin-
ished, that in some living species the wing is only repre-
sented by a horny claw.

External surroundings cannot, however, create hands,
feet, eyes, ears, and brains. The cavern darkness has
taken away the exterior eyes of the a7)iblyopsis ; but light
has failed to give eyes to the protozoa, though they have
been on the planet since the Laurentian times. Webbed
feet are very useful to water-birds, but the water never
made them. The water-ousel lives almost entirely in the
water, like a duck ; it feeds on shell-fish and water
insects ; its food and habits are almost the same as the
grebe ; its ancestors lived a similar life for as many years
as naturalists have been acquainted with them, and prob-
ably for a million years before that : yet its feet are no
more webbed than those of a sparrow. There must be
tendency before formation. An idiot can fire a palace of
beauty, and leave only a pile of ashes ; but to build one
requires an architect.

From the dawn of life upon our planet, animals and
plants have been surrounded by constantly improving
conditions : the intense heat has diminished, poisonous
gases have been eliminated from the atmosphere, the
land surface of the globe has increased, and, accom-
panying this advance, organic forms have improved, as
geology demonstrates, with every new group of rocks

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

deposited. Had sunlight departed from the world in the
Silurian age, birds, beasts, and men had never appeared
upon our planet. Had the climate and atmosphere of
the carboniferous period remained, it is not probable that
man could ever have been developed here. The power
to produce a frog exists in the tadpole, but light is essen-
tial for its operation ; and thus there lay in the fcetal
globe the power to produce a man, but the improve-
ments of millions of years were essential to mould him
to his present form, and it will require millions more to
perfect him.

SYMMETRY.

Another law that has operated in the production of
organic beings is the law of Symmetry. Lop off the

Fig. 9. Fig. 95.

Clay-Stones from the banks of the Connecticut River. (Original.)

branches of a young tree, till there is nothing left but a
bare stick, and soon a branch will grow to the right.

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

another to the left, a new stem will shoot upward, and
branches will symmetrically develop from this, and the
tree is a thing of beauty once more. The very clay
stones (Figs. 9, 9^^, 10, 10^), that grow in some clay beds,
beneath the water-level of their locality, manifest as
perfect symmetry as the crystals in the rocks below them,
the flowers that bloom above them, and the human beings
that see and admire them. The right hemisphere of

Fig. 10. Fig. 105.

Clay-Stones, foot of Mount Tom, Mass. (Original.)

man's brain corresponds with his left ; and he thus has
two brains, as he has two nostrils, two eyes, and two ears.
Almost every part of his body is duplicate.

Even diseases are symmetrical. Mr. James Paget,
quoted by Mivart in his " Genesis of Species," referring
to symmetrical diseases, writes, "A certain morbid
change of structure on one side of the body is repeated
in the exactly corresponding part of the other side."

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 41

He figures a diseased lion's pelvis from the Museum of
the College of Surgeons, and says of it, " Multiform as
the pattern is, in which the new bone, the product of
some disease, comparable with a human rheumatism, is
deposited, — a pattern more complex and irregular than
the spots upon a map, — there is not one spot or line on
one side which is not represented, as exactly as it would
be in a mirror, on the other. The likeness has more
than daguerreotype exactness."

Symmetry, then, is one of the tools used by the omni-
present spirit in moulding the frame of man ; and we are
symmetrical because the law of symmetry has presided
over the upbuilding of our structure.

NATURAL SELECTION.

Then, we have the law of Natural Selection, so ably
elucidated by Charles Darwin. I do not believe that it
has been as effectual in its operation as Darwin and the
Darwinians suppose ; but, that it has assisted in produ-
cing our present forms of animal and vegetable life, there
can be no doubt. It is the gardener that trims the tree
of life, lops off the imperfect branches, and destroys the
sprouts that might divert its energies ; but it is not the
creator that gave life and form to the tree, and sent
through its veins the invigorating sap.

Life pushes into the field continually more beings than
can possibly survive. A cod will produce at a birth from

42 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

four to nine millions ; a full-grown elm will perfect in one
season a hundred million seeds ; a pair of rabbits in a
hundred and fifty years, if they were unrestrained, would
stock the entire land-surface of the globe. The result of
this superabundance of life is a grand struggle for exist-
ence, in which the weak, the ill-formed, the bad-condi-
tioned, are killed off, and those animals and plants most
in harmony with their surroundings survive, and perpet-
uate their harmonious organization to their posterity. In
a fish, that which assists it in the struggle may be dense-
ness of scale, length of fin, or length of tooth, enabhng it
to distance its pursuers or hold its slippery prey ; in the
bird it may be length of wing, strength of claw or bill, or
some modification of color, by which it baffles the keen
eyes of its enemies : whatever gives an animal or plant
the advantage, puts a weapon into its hands, with which
it kills those who do not possess it, and it then appropri-
ates the place for itself, and entails it for those of its
posterity who possess the same advantages. Thus the
most perfect types of organized being are preserved by
a general providence, that watches with sleepless eye, and
works for the benefit of the whole.

In Scotland we find a red grouse feeding among the
red heather of the mountains and moors. "Here is a
special providence," says a believer in the miraculous :
"the hawks and the eagles, that hunt by sight, cannot
see the red grouse among the equally red heather, and

Oi^, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 43

thus it escapes." But suppose that originally grouse
were white, and one, by the operation of the law of vari-
ation, was born red : the hawks and eagles being unable
to see it, it escapes, and gives birth, by the law of inherit-
ance, to birds of its own color ; they also escape ; the
white ones being all the time weeded out, in consequence
of being so conspicuous, the grouse are at length all red
as we find them. Here is a providence that cares for
hawks and eagles as well as grouse : it watches over flea
and philosopher, and works for the perfection of every
living creature. By the operation of these and doubtless
many other laws, through the immense ages of our
planet's past, life has advanced, as a tree advances to
fruit, and we are here as the grand result.

" But do you mean to say," inquires an objector,
" that these blind laws, to which you have referred, could
ever make the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the thinking
brain, and the soulful man?" Most emphatically no!
But the laws are by no means blind : they are to me the
modes of operation of the all-seeing and all-knowing
spirit, without whose direction a man could no more be
produced from the " insensate clod," than a bowlder roll-
ing down a mountain torrent could be fashioned into a
perfect copy of the Venus de Medici by the accidental
blows of the rocks with which it came in contact.
Grant a law of life : what should cause this life to be
manifested in a sexual form and be thus perpetuated?

44 IS DARWIN- RIGHT?

Grant a law of variation : mere variation would operate
to make an animal smaller as well as larger, less perfect
as well as more perfect, to form an eye behind as well as
before, on the tail as likely as the head ; it would start a
nose on the hand as readily as the face, an ear on the
foot, and develop a tongue between the fingers as readi-
ly as between the jaws. How long would it be before
undirected variation could produce a perfect eye in an
animal otherwise bhnd ? About as long as it would take
for the letters of the alphabet thrown promiscuously down
to arrange themselves into a beautiful poem.

But we cannot leave these laws out of sight, nor deny
their operation. I hear two men discussing about the
way in which babies become men. " I tell you, they do
it," says one. "Who do it?" says the other. "Why,
the fairies." — "Do what?" — "Why, transform the ba-
bies into men." — "What have the fairies to do with it,
pray?" — "They have every thing to do with it, and
without their influence such a thing as a man could never
be." — "But how do you suppose the fairies accomplish
this work?" — " I will tell you: you have noticed that
babies sleep a great deal? " — " Certainly." — " Well,
that is when it is done : they pass inside the child, for
you know they can go anywhere and do any thing ; they
enlarge the brain, expand the skull, extend the limbs,
and, in short, do all that is needed to be done to make
the infant into a man." — "But did you ever see this pro-

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 45

cess, which you thus describe ? " — " Oh, no ! the fairies,
you know, are invisible, and therefore we can never see
them at work." — "But how, then, do you know that the
fairies do all this?" — "Because there is no other way in
which we can account for such a wonderful change as the
transformation of a baby into a man." — " I regard your
story as a monstrous fable." — " How, then, do you think
that babies are changed into men?" — "Well, I do not
profess to know entirely how it is done, but there are
some things connected with the matter that I do know :
you have noticed that babies frequently require nourish-
ment?"— "Yes." — "Well, that has a great deal to do
with it. If they did not take food into the system, they
would die, and could not become men. You must have
noticed also that they breathe : this is of great impor-
tance ; and if they were prevented, for even a few min-
utes, death would be the consequence. They sleep also :
and this is important ; lack of sleep would end in lack of
life, and the transformation of the baby into the man
would cease." Then I hear the first exclaim, " But do
you mean to say that blind eating, drinking, sleeping,
and breathing, can change an utterly helpless and know-
nothing infant, weighing eight or ten pounds, into the
strong and hearty man, who masters the world, scales the
heavens, and makes all the forces of nature minister to
his needs?" To which the 'second replies, "Oh, no ! I
do not say that : more than all else, infinitely more, is

46 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

the spirit of the child derived from the father and the
mother. It is this that presides over its organization,
from the time it is an ail-but invisible dot till it is born,
and then makes eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping
subservient to the building-up of the wondrous structure
that we call a man.

So the universal spirit, never for an instant absent from
the world, has operated by means of these laws during
millions of years, and through myriads of forms, till at
length it was able to say, '" I have made a man, but mil-
lions of years will even yet be necessary to finish him."

POINTERS INDICATING MAN'S NATURAL

ORIGIN.

METAMORPHOSIS OF ANIMALS.

In addition to these laws, whose existence can be
demonstrated and their operation seen, there are what I
call pointers, which, although they do not demonstrate
that man came into existence naturally, and without the
operation of miracle, yet they point very significantly in
that direction. The first pointer is the metamorphosis of
animals, or the change of form that they undergo from
the time they are conceived until they are fully formed.
All animals are alike to the eye when in their primitive
egg state ; and, in passing to their mature form, all the

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

higher animals go through a series of significant changes.
J. W. Draper, the well-known physiologist, says, " All ani-
mals proceed from eggs as simple in structure as the
simplest infusoria produced spontaneously, and no art can
distinguish one of the highest class from one of the
lowest." Professor Clark, of Harvard College, Cambridge,
says, " All animals, from the monad, the gum-drop amoe-
ba, up to man, at one time cannot possibly be distin-
guished from one another. . . . You could not tell the

Fig. II. Fig. 12. Fig. 13.

Fig. h. — Primitive Egg of a Trout. Fig. 12. — Primitive Egg of a Hen.

Fig. 13. — Primitive Human Egg. (After Haeckel.)

one from the other any more readily than you could dis-
tinguish a drop of water from Cochituate Lake from that
of Mystic River." (Fig. 11, Fig. 12, and Fig. 13.) So,
it is highly probable that man's original ancestors, in the
earliest ocean containing organized life, were equally
undistinguishable from the progenitors of other types of
life that swarmed in the ocean with them.

The mosquito is first an ^gg, then a worm ; at last an
insect on filmy wings, " blowing its shrill trumpet," as it

48 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

prepares to attack us for our blood. The silkworm is
an ^gg, then a worm, eating and growing from thirty
to forty days, when it weaves its enclosing case, and
passes into the chrysalis state. While in this condition
strange transformations take place : its jaws are changed
into a coiled tongue, its stomach is shortened, compound
eyes take the place of simple eyes, antennae make their
appearance upon the forehead, wings spring from the
sides, and out issues the queenly moth.

The frog commences its existence, like all other ani-
mals, with the ^gg, as we see them in spring in the pools
by the wayside, surrounded by jelly. In about a month
it leaves the ^gg, but it is in a very imperfect condition.
The head is quite large ; but there are no traces of ears,
nostrils, lungs, or even gills. About the fourth day after
its birth, ears and nostrils make their appearance, and
little branching gills. The mouth is soon furnished with
a horny beak, and the tail is lengthened and widened :
the animal is now a tadpole, and we should call it a fish
if we did not know what it was destined to become. It
breathes by means of gills, as the fish does, propels itself
through the water with its long, broad, flat tail, as the fish
also does, and 'feeds upon the plants that grow in its
watery abode : there is no trace of either internal or
external limbs. In the hinder part of the body two bud-
like swellings appear, and two like them in the front,
which develop into limbs, when the tail is gradually

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 49

absorbed, and at length disappears from sight. While
these changes are taking place, others, less observable
but more important, are going on. The mouth increases
in size and gape ; the horny lips are replaced by teeth ;
the intestines are shortened ; the gills dwindle in size ; the
lungs, that before were solid and small, enlarge and be-
come cavernous ; the fish-heart is modified, a third cham-
ber being developed by the expansion of one of the
large arteries ; the vessels that convey blood to the gills
are gradually suppressed, the work of the gills is at
length forever done ; the water is no longer a suitable
place of abode ; the frog gasps, takes its first full breath,
leaps upon the land, and croaks its joy at finding itself in
such a superior condition. (Fig. 14.) But the other
day it was a fish feeding upon water-plants, with a
horny beak ; and now it is a frog, with rows of teeth,
a changed stomach, and a changed appetite, and woe
to the fly that comes within the range of its glutinous
tongue !

Why is the insect first a worm, and the frog first a
fish ? Geologically we have reason to beheve that worms
preceded insects, and fishes preceded frogs, by milHons
of years ; and it appears that every animal shows us in
its development the road over which its ancestors trav-
elled during the early ages of the world.

What is true of all animals below man is equally true
of him. The existence of man on this planet com-

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

mences with an ovum, or tgg, formed in the body of the
female, which is about yjy of an inch in diameter, or
barely visible to the naked eye. It contains a yolk, con-

FiG. 14. — Metamorphosis of the Frog. i. The embryo frog in the egg; 2. At a
more advanced stage; 3. Tadpole four days after being hatched; 4. At a more
advanced stage; 5. A stage farther, when its gills have dwindled; 6. The per-
fect tadpole; 7. The gills are now gone, and hind limbs are seen; 8. Frog nearly
perfect.

sisting of a multitude of granules ; and in this is a trans-
parent vesicle which is called the germ vesicle, and this
contains a small round dark spot called the germ-spot.
(Fig. 15.)

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

^^'hen impregnated by the sperm-cells of the male, the

Fig. 15. — The Human Egg greatly enlarged. (After Haeckel.)

germ vesicle and germ-spot disappear, and the ^gg then

Fig. 16. — The impregnated INIammalian Egg. (After Haeckel.)

presents the appearance of a drop of gum or speck of
jelly (Fig. 16), resembling the simplest forms of life
known to us, the amoeba.

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Soon after its formation a round kernel is formed in its
interior, which occupies the centre of the cell ; and in
the centre of that is a small dot called the nucleolus.
This cell, the product of both parents, in which the first

Fig. 17. — The Mammalian Egg shortly after impregnation, when it Is called the

Parent Cell. (After Haeckel.)

germ of the future individual appears, is called the parent
cell. (Fig. 17.)

The next step in the evolution of the man is the
division of the kernel into two, just as the amoeba divides
to form a new animal. (Fig. 18.) These repel each other,
separate, and attract the matter contained in the parent
cell, and thus form two cells, which contain, as the first
did, a nucleus and central dot or nucleolus. The cells
soon change from a globular to an oval form, (Fig. 19.)
One of the Mvo is larger and more transparent than the

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

Other ; and, as the cells continue to divide, the larger and
lighter increase at a quicker rate than the cells produced

Fig. i8. — An Amoeba in the act of reproduction. A. The whole Amoeba: B. The
Amoeba dividing; C a and Cb. The two halves, now independent individuals.
(After Haeckel.)

from the smaller and darker, till they form what is called

Fig. 19. — Gjmmencem.ent of Cleavage in the Mammalian Egg. (Haeckel.)

a morula or mulberry mass, consisting of a multitude of
small cells, of which the organs of the future animal are

/S DARWIN RIGHT?

to be built. The larger, lighter, and more active cells
form eventually a layer, called the animal layer, from
which the skin, the spine, the spinal marrow, the brain,
and the entire bony skeleton, are produced ; the smaller,
darker, and more sluggish cells also form a layer, called
the vegetative layer, from which the organs of digestion
and reproduction are made.

Fig. 20. — The Primitive Trace.

These layers form a circular germ-area, the centre of
which is occupied by a transparent area, which is like-
wise circular. In the centre of the transparent space, in
the germ-area, a line makes its appearance, where the
future spinal column will be : this is called the primitive
trace, which is the foundation of the man. (Fig. 20.)

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 55

At the end of the second week the human being is one-
twelfth of an inch in length : as yet there is no distinc-
tion between fish, reptile, bird, mammal, or man, all
being formed in the same way, and having the same
appearance.

The trace enlarges, its edges thicken, rise, and bend
forward in front, till they join, and form a tube, which is
destined to contain the brain and spinal cord : this is
sometimes called the spinal tube. At the same time the
edges of the under side of the primitive trace bend back-
ward, curve, unite, and form a second tube, which be-
comes the abdominal cavity, enclosing the alimentary
canal and the reproductive organs : this is sometimes
called the intestinal tube. When the human being is
three weeks old, it is about one-sixth of an inch in length :
a swelling exists where the head is to be, and the first
rudiments of the eye, the ear, and the brain, make their
appearance. The limbs are entirely wanting, there is no
real face, and nothing to distinguish man from opossum,
dog, or ape.

At the end of the fourth week the human embryo is
nearly half an inch long ; the head with its various parts
can be plainly distinguished ; the heart shows all four
compartments, and nearly fills the chest cavity ; the rudi-
ments of the lungs appear, and all the essential parts of
the body may be seen. Yet even now, as Haeckel says
(to whose work " The Evolution of Man," I am indebted

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

for most of this description), in this stage we are still un-
able to discern any characters essentially distinguishing
the human embryo from those of the dog, the rabbit, the
ox, the horse, or, indeed, of any of the higher mammals."
(Figs. 21, 22, 23, 24.) It is true, the head is a little

Fig. 21. Fig. 22. Fig. 23. Fic. 24.

Fig. 21. — The Embryo of the Fish at an early period of its development. Fig.
22. — The Embryo of the Chick. FiG. 23. — The Embryo of the Hog. Fig. 24.
— The Embryo of the Man.

larger in man than in the hog, and th^" tail is a little
shorter ; but the tail of man when he is a month old is
double the length of his legs.

At eight weeks old the human embryo can scarcely be
distinguished from that of the highest apes, but after this
its human character is firmly established.

Dr. Roget tells us that "the human embryo is not
exempt from the same metamorphoses" (that is, those to
which the lower animals are subject), "possessing at
one period branchiae and branchial apertures similar to

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 57

those of the cartilaginous fishes, a heart with a single
set of cavities, and a brain consisting of a longitudinal
series of tubercles ; next losing its branchiae, and acquir-
ing lungs, while the circulation is yet single, and thus
imitating the condition of the reptile ; then acquiring a
double circulation, but an incomplete diaphragm, like
birds ; afterwards appearing like a quadruped, with a
caudal prolongation of the sacrum, and an intermaxillary
bone ; and, lastly, changing its structure to one adapted
to the erect position." ^

Agassiz says of the human brain, " It first becomes a
brain resembling that of a fish, then it grows into the
form of that of a reptile, then into that of a bird, then
into that of a mammiferous quadruped, and finally it
assumes the form of a human brain ; 'thus comprising in
its foetal progress an epitome of geological history, as if
man were in himself a compendium of all animated
nature, and of kin to every creature that lives.' " - And
Agassiz' conjecture is probably the exact truth, and the
correct explanation of these wonderful resemblances.
Huxley says, " It is very long before the body of the
young human being can be distinguished from that of
the young puppy." It may be considered an unfortunate
circumstance, that the mental similarity continues much

* Roget, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii., p. 443.
2 Preface to Footprints of the Creator.

58 ^ IS DARWIN RIGHT?

But why do human beings resemble protozoans, the
simplest forms of life ; then worms, brainless fishes, true
fishes, so that they even have gills and gill apertures ;
why do they advance through forms that closely resem-
ble those of the reptile, the bird, the lower mammal, and
the ape, before they assume the proper human type?
Are not these so many steps by which man has ascended
to his elevated position? Is it not safe to say that if
there had never been a protozoan, produced sponta-
neously, there never could have been a worm ; without a
worm never a fish ; without a fish never a reptile, bird, or
man?

All the facts connected with man's metamorphoses
from the tgg to the perfect being, and they are millions,
unite in pointing to man's natural and therefore to man's
brutal origin. In this sense the brute is father of the
man.

ANATOMICAL SIMILARITY.

Another pointer is the anatomical similarity between
man and the lower animals. The number of limbs in
the vertebrates of all ages has been four. The first true
fishes balanced themselves with four fins, as our present
ones do ; their forward fins corresponding with our arms,
the hinder ones with our legs. The reptile walks with
four feet ; the bird with two, because the other twp have
become wings, and are needed for flight : they are but

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

feathered arms. The monkeys are said to have four
hands ; but in reahty they have two feet, that are fre-
quently used as hands, which they somewhat resemble,
and two hands that are frequently used as feet.

We share our digits with vast numbers of both living
and extinct forms. Our earliest star-fishes have five fin-

FiG. 25. Fig. 26.

Fig. 25. — Palceaster Ruthveni. Fig. 26. — Palasterina Primceva. Both
from the Upper Silurian of Great Britain. (After Salter).

gers (Figs. 25 and 26), as have most of our living ones.
The fingers of the crinoids are always some multiple of
five, while their cups, when angular, are always five-sided,
and their stalks nearly always so. The old labyrinthodon
left a five-digited track on the Triassic sandstones, that
looks marvellously like the impression of a rude human
hand. (Fig. 27.) In the foot of the musk-rat, in the
paw of the bear and lion, in the flipper of the dolphin,
the wing of the bat, and the undivided paddle of the
whale, are the same number of bones, and in the same
places, as in the hand of the man who writes an article
to disprove man's natural origin.

6o IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Man has seven cervical vertebrae in his neck ; so has
the giraffe that feeds upon the mimosa-trees, twenty feet
high, and the pig that can hardly be said to have a neck
at all.

All the higher apes have the same number of vertebrae

Fig. 27. — Track of the Labyrinthodon.

as man ; their teeth are the same ; and so close is the
general resemblance between them and man, that Owen,
our highest authority in comparative anatomy, says, " I
cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-per-
vading similitude of structure — every tooth, every bone,
strictly homologous — which makes the determination of
the difference between ho7no and pitJiecus " (that is,
between man and the monkey) " the anatomist's diffi-
culty." ^ As late as the sixteenth century, human anato-
my was taught and studied from the skeleton of the
monkey alone. The anatomical differences that exist
between the various famihes of monkeys are greater than
those that exist between the anthropomorplious apes —
such as the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gorilla — and
man.

1 Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London for 1857.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 6 1

Why this close anatomical resemblance? A miracu-
lous creator could hardly be supposed to follow the same
model in creating man that was used for these brutes, so
immeasurably his inferiors ; and in this similarity of
form, which exists between man and the animals below
him, we have a pointer whose significance may be
denied, but can hardly be doubted.

LINKING FORMS.

The linking forms, which exist between man and the
lowest types of life, constitute another pointer. Man
does not float like a balloon, completely cut off from all
below him, but is uniteei with the lowest organisms by a
series of animal forms, that are like so many layers of
stone in a pyramid, of which he forms the apex. It is
now generally acknowledged that animals and plants are
so closely linked in their lowest forms, that they pass into
each other by insensible gradations. The protozoa, as
Page says in his geological hand-book, " appear almost
to occupy a sort of neutral ground between animals and
vegetables." Hence they are called by some naturalists
Phytozoa, or plant-animals. Professor Clark, one of the
best of microscopists, says, " To this day there remains
a doubt as to the animal or vegetable nature of certain
forms, which have characters that lead on the one side to
plants, and on the other to animals."^ Sponges have

^ Mind in Nature, p. 151.

62 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

been placed on both sides of the Hne by many natural-
ists ; and, though now regarded as animals, they are
rooted, manifest no feeling, and appear lower in the scale
than some plants with which we are acquainted.

It is but a step from the protozoa to the opalina, a
creature covered with vibratory cilia, that is frequently
classed with the protozoa, but is allied very closely to cer-
tain worms. Various classes of worms carry us near to
the line of the lowest of the vertebrates, like the amphi-
oxus, a fish, and yet destitute of skull, brain, jaws, limbs,
and jointed vertebral column. Step by step we pass
along the line of the fishes, till we come to forms which
are exceedingly difiicult to class either with fishes or with
amphibians. The proteus of the Austrian caves, the lepi-
dosiren or mud-fish, and the axolotl of Mexico, are fish-
like animals with long tails, and possess both lungs and
gills. In the water they can breathe by means of their
gills, and in the air by means of their lungs. In zoologi-
cal works to-day these forms are sometimes classed with
amphibians and sometimes with fishes. From the am-
phibians to the true reptiles the distance is not great ;
but from the reptiles that crawl, to the birds that fly, the
space is wide : geology, however, enables us to bridge
or nearly bridge the chasm between them. The ptero-
dactyle was a flying lizard with bird-like characteristics.
(Fig. 28.) The Jurassic and cretaceous beds furnish us
with skeletons of dinosaurs that walked upon their hind-

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

^2.

legs alone, and were apparently on the march to the
bird ; while Solenhofen presents us with a bird having
reptilian teeth and a reptihan but feathered tail, and the
cretaceous beds of Kansas have yielded birds with rep-
tilian jaws and bristling teeth. (Fig. 29.)

Fig. 28. — Restored Skeleton of the Pterodactyle. The species represented is

Pterodactylus Crassirostris.

There is considerable space to-day between the bird
and the mammal, and doubtless we shall yet discover
between them many intermediate fossil forms. Yet in
the ornithorhynchus we see a mammal with webbed feet ;
broad flat jaws, destitute of teeth, that resemble those of
a duck ; an animal that has but one excretory orifice, hke
a bird, and produces eggs, but they are hatched before
thev leave the oviduct.

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

When we advance from the lower mammals to man,
we approach a chasm that has been regarded as infinitel}^
wide and that requires a miracle to span ; but, as Huxley
says, " no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider
than that between the animals that immediately succeed
us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world

Fig. 29. — Jaws of Fossil Birds from the Cretaceous Beds of Kansas. Lower
Jaw of Ichihyorttis Dispar. Lower Jaw of Hesperortiis Regalis. (After
Marsh.)

and ourselves." If we look at brain-capacity, where we
find the greatest disproportion between the quadrumana
and man, we learn that the difference between the brain-
capacity of the average Australian and the largest Cau-
casian is five and a half cubic inches greater than be-
tween the average gorilla and the smallest Australian. If
the small brain-capacity of the Australian will not prevent
him from rising in the scale of manhood till individ-
uals of his race shall equal the highest Caucasian brain
endowment, the nthe smallness of the brain-capacity of

OR, THE ORIGIN- OF MAN. 65

the ape-like forms that parented humanity may not have
prevented them from advancing to the brain-capacity of
the lowest Australian. The fact, however, is, as has been
frequently said, man is widening the gap between him-
self and the lower animals continually, and must have
been doing so for ages, by killing off the animals that
are most like himself, their wants and his being almost
identical, and by advancing in cerebral power and gen-
eral manhood. What the brain-capacity of the animals
was, from which human beings are directly descended, it
may be difficult to say, as they have long since perished ;
but human skulls of the greatest age show us, by the
general smallness of their size and their inferior develop-
ment, that the gap between brutality and humanity was,
in all probability, much narrower in ancient times than it
is at present.

I do not suppose, as Darwinians do, that all the steps
taken by animals in their progressive march were neces-
sarily minute. They may have been as great as would
enable animals to pass from one variety to another, and
in some cases the steps may have been as wide as those
that separate specific forms of the same genus. There
may be indeed a magnetic force, of whose operation we
have obscure indications, that in the past time of our
planet's history was much more active than at present,
and by whose agency greater organic changes took place,
and with greater rapidity, than is possible at the present
time.

66 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

RUDIMENTARY ORGANS.

One of the most significant pointers is the existence
of what are called rudimentary organs, or what might be
more properly called redundant organs. In addition to
those organs which animals possess, that are in general
use, there are other organs or parts of organs, that are
not of the slightest utility, but point back to ancestral
forms of life^ in which they were of use. All ruminants,
except camels, are destitute of incisors in the upper jaw.
Most persons are familiar with the fact that the cow has a
hard pad, occupying the place which in us is occupied
by the upper incisor teeth. The unborn calf, however,
has incisor teeth in the upper jaw, that never cut through
the gum, and are therefore never of the slightest use to
the animal. As the blind-fish of the caves lost its eyes
because it never used them, so these animals, we may
suppose, are descended from an animal that possessed
incisors in the upper jaw and used them ; but some de-
scendant of this animal, by a variation in its structure,
was able to crop grass by a lateral motion of its lower
jaw, the assistance of its tongue, and mere pressure upon
the upper jaw, and in process of time the upper incis-
ors were lost. The unborn animal never having been
modified, in the foetal calf we have a representative of the
unmodified upper-incisor-using ancestor, probably of the
early tertiary times.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

The horse and its probable ancestors furnish us with
interesting examples of rudimentary or redundant organs.
In the leg of the horse we find what are called splint
bones, which answer to the index and ring fingers of the
human hand : there are, however, no exterior toes to
correspond with these interior bones, except in special
cases, in which horses are occasionally seen with two
small hoofs attached to these bones. Until the discovery

Fig. 30. — Modifications of the Foot of the Horse, i. Foot of the Recent Horse;
2. Foot of the Hipparion ; 3. Foot of the Miohippus ; 4. Foot of the Orohip-
pus. (After Marsh.)

of horse-like animals in the tertiary deposits, no one
could imagine what was the meaning of these bones and
the occasional appearance of extra hoofs.

In European beds belonging to the pliocene, the high-
est division of the tertiary, we find an animal called the
hipparion, about the size of an ass, but greatly resembling
the horse in anatomical structure. It had, however, a
small toe on each side of the hoof, that never reached

68 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

the ground. (Fig. 30.) If this animal, which was very
abundant before the horse made its appearance, was the
ancestor of the horse, we may account for the sphnt
bones in the leg of the horse, and the occasional appear-
ance of dangling toes on its leg. They are heirlooms
from the ancestral hippario7i. But what is the meaning
of the toes that never touch the ground in the leg of the
hipparion ? To discover the meaning of these, we must
go still farther back.

In the miocene beds of the United States we find a
horse-like animal about the size of a sheep, called the
miohippiis, furnished with three serviceable toes on each
foot ; but the middle toe is the longest and much the
largest, and must have been most used. There is also a
rudimentary splint-bone on each fore-leg, and we now
naturally look still farther back for the meaning of this.

In the middle eocene we find the orohippus, another
horse-like animal, but not much larger than a fox ; in it
we find the rudimentary splint-bone of the miohippus re-
placed by a perfect and serviceable toe, though the hind-
legs have but three toes, as have those of the miohippus.

In the lowest beds of the eocene are found the re-
mains of the eohippus (dawn-horse). This was no larger
than a fox, yet had considerable resemblance to the
horse, and had on its fore-feet four serviceable toes, and
a rudimentary fifth toe. We look still farther back, there-
fore, for a five-toed true eohippus : it has not yet been

OJ^, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 69

discovered, but may be found in the cretaceous beds, as
a diminutive horse about as large as a rabbit. All mod-
ern horses may not have descended from the horse-like
animals whose names I have mentioned, for in my opin-
ion horses have been developed along several lines ; but
I have no doubt that all of them passed through similar
metamorphoses in the course of their development, and
the traces of the ancestors can be seen in their more
developed progeny.

True whales, those from which the whalebone is ob-
tained, have no teeth ; but the foetal whale has from sixty
to seventy teeth on each side of the jaw. The whale is
probably descended from some carnivorous mammal, that
had teeth and used them ; but some of its descendants
became so varied that baleen took the place of teeth,
which only appear to-day in the unmodified foetus.

The apteryx of New Zealand is a wingless bird ; yet
the wing-bones, reduced to mere rudiments, are there.
Living as its ancestors did in a country where there were
no mammals to disturb it, flight was unnecessary, and by
disuse the wings became smaller ; and the modified de-
scendants of the flying ancestors have but horny claws
where the wings once were.

Boas and pythons, those gigantic snakes, have rudi-
mentary hind-limbs, consisting of a few small bones sus-
pended in the muscles on each side, and terminated in a
horny claw, which appears on the outside. These rudi-

70 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

mentary limbs are good evidence that their remote an-
cestors could walk. Among lizards to-day we may almost
see the steps by which ancient lizards were modified into
snakes. In the family of the scincidcE, we find the genus
scincus, with short feet and a body nearly cylindrical and
covered with scales. In seps the legs are very weak and
set far apart ; so that it trusts little to its limbs, and wrig-
gles along like a snake. It is not surprising to find ani-
mals in which the reduction of the limbs has been carried
farther still, and only a few bones in some cases are left
to show where the limbs have been.

Nor is man destitute of similar indications of his pre-
vious ancestors. In most persons the ability to move the
ears is gone, though the rudiments of the muscles by
which the motions were once effected are still there.
(Fig. 31.) In the skeleton of man we can still see the
bones of the tail, that must have characterized his pro-
genitors, but which was lost long before the appearance
of humanity.

PALEONTOLOGICAL RESEMBLANCE.

The resemblance that exists between living animals
found in certain districts of country and the fossil ani-
mals found in the recent tertiary deposits of the same
districts is another pointer.

In South America there are found at this time the
sloth, the armadillo, the cavy, or guinea-pig as it is some-

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

times called, the ctenomys, and platyrrhine or broad-nos-
trilled monkeys ; but none of these are found in Europe,
Asia, or Africa. In accordance with this the bone-caves
of South America, belonging to the recent tertiary period,
furnish us with fossil sloths, armadillos, cavys, ctenomys,
and platyrrhine monkeys : they are not, however, of the
same species as the living ones, and they are generally

Fig. 31. Rudimentary Ear-Moving ]Muscles in the Human Head. (After

Haeckel.)

much larger ; but none of these are found in recent ter-
tiary deposits of Europe, Asia, or Africa. If the present
mammals of South America are the modified descendants
of its tertiary mammals, this is just what we should expect ;
but if the species of animals were miraculously created,
no good reason can be given why these forms should
have been restricted to the South American continent,
when they can just as well live on all the others.

72 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

New Zealand has very few indigenous mammals, a bat,
a mouse, and perhaps a kind of fox, being all ; but it has
a family of wingless birds, of which there are three spe-
cies. In accordance with this no fossil mammals have
been found in New Zealand, but several species of wing-
less birds, some of gigantic size.

Of more than forty species of mammals indigenous to
Australia, all but one or two are marsupial ; and the fos-
sil mammals, though in some cases as large as the rhi-
noceros, were also marsupial. If the wingless birds of
New Zealand and the pouched mammals of Australia are
naturally descended from similar, though generally more
gigantic, wingless birds and pouched mammals of the
tertiary times, this is just what we should expect to find ;
but, if animals were specially created for their respective
localities, why should such countries as Australia, Tas-
mania, and New Zealand be destitute of the horse, the
sheep, the bos, and the goat, to which they are so well
adapted ?

GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION.

This is also an important pointer. Had man made his
appearance on the planet with no preceding forms at all
resembling him, had the animals of the present time had
no predecessors in the earlier times with which we could
connect them, we should have naturally supposed that
they were created instantly and full-grown. But man is

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 73

only the last link of a chain that extends through the
ages : we do not see all the links ; but we see a sufficient
number to assure us that they are all there, and the chain
has never been broken. If man has come by gradual
advancement from the simplest organic forms produced
spontaneously, we should find, as we trace living beings
backward through the geologic ages, that they constantly
become simpler in structure, and bear a nearer resem-
blance to the primitive forms, from which we may reason-
ably suppose them to have been developed. This is just
what we find. Below the pliocene tertiary, all traces of
man are lost, but his brute relations, the monkeys, are
numerous : as we descend, these become smaller in size,
and possess smaller and smoother brains, till in the creta-
ceous beds all traces of the monkey are gone. Mammals,
however, remain until we reach the triassic age, when
we find the largest smaller than a rabbit and as bird-like
in its organization as the opossum. Below the trias the
highest animals are reptiles, whose remains are found
through the triassic age and the Permean, when they also
disappear, and amphibians, the next lower organic link,
are the highest representatives of life. These continue
until we reach the earliest portion of the carboniferous
period, when we bid farewell to the amphibians. Back-
ward still to discover what life's organic beginnings were
like. Here in the Devonian are fishes, enormous fishes,
mailed fishes, but nothing higher has yet been found ;

74 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

for millions of years we retreat through the Devonian,
through the Upper Silurian, the fish dwindling in size and
numbers at every step, till at last even fishes have van-
ished. But shells remain, some of them enormous ;
orthoceratites, fifteen to twenty feet long, their muscular
arms outspread and their spire-like shells pointing up-
ward, as they crawl over the sea-bottom and seize their
prey. We pass through the Silurian into the Cambrian ;
and, as we go, the shells dwindle, till the largest is no
larger than the finger-nail ; and the shells in their turn
disappear. Is there any thing left ? In the very lowest
beds of the Cambrian we find radiated, fan-like forms,
belonging, it is generally believed, to the radiata ; and
these are the highest expressions of life. If eozoon
should prove to be an animal, then in the very lowest
beds in which the remains of organic beings have been
found, the protozoa, the lowest of all animals, are the only
evidences that we find of life's organized embodiment.

INSULAR ORGANIC RESEMBLANCE.

The resemblance that is found between animals and
plants on islands and those found on the neighboring
mainland constitutes another important pointer. On the
Galapagos Islands, which are six hundred miles north-
west of South America, are found birds, tortoises, igu-
anas, crabs, beetles and plants, nearly all differing specifi-
cally from those of other localities. Darwin, who visited

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAM. 75

the islands, and carefully examined the animals and
plants, says, " Here almost every product of the land
and water bears the unmistakable stamp of the American
continent. There are twenty-six land-birds, and twenty-
one, perhaps twenty-three, of these are ranked as distinct
species, and are supposed to have been created here ; yet
the close affinity of most of these birds to American
species in every character, in their habits, gestures, and
tones of voice, was manifest. So it is with the other
animals and with nearly all the plants." The animals
and plants of New Guinea in like manner resemble those
of Australia, to which the island is contiguous. Those
found in Java are like those living on the Asiatic conti-
nent. Cape Verde species resemble those of Africa, near
to which it lies ; and those of New Zealand are like the
species living on x\ustralia, the nearest large body of
land.

We cannot conceive that a Creator, as the Galapagos
Islands successively came up from the bottom of the sea
(for they are volcanic), made the birds, tortoises, igu-
anas, crabs, beetles, and plants for them like those of the
nearest land, yet specifically distinct from them. It is
evident that when the Galapagos Islands arose from the
deep, they received most of their tenants from the neigh-
boring continent : some may have been developed there,
some flew there, some were blown by the winds, others
wafted by the waves, and still others carried by birds

76 JS DARWIN RIGHT?

Separated as they were from the original forms for long
periods of time and under different conditions, they devi-
ated from them so far as to produce new species, but the
likeness to their progenitors is still retained.

Had the islands never received any tenants from other
localities, they would probably have been peopled by
animals and plants exclusively indigenous ; but for life to
advance from the protozoa, to reptiles and birds, may
require, even where conditions are favorable, vast ages
for its accomplishment.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

If man first made his appearance upon this planet
about six thousand years ago, then we can be sure he is
not of natural origin : nothing short of a miracle could
have given him in so short a time the perfection to which
we know he had attained at about that period. If we
can prove that he has been here for a hundred thousand
years, it does not follow that he was not miraculously
created ; but, taken with a multitude of other concur-
ring facts, this also points in the direction of man's
natural evolution.

It is but a short time since it was generally taught, and
almost universally believed, that the earth is but six thou-
sand years old, and that it, together with the rest of the
universe, compared with the known portion of which our
planet is small as an invisible atom, were made in six

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 77

days, of twenty-four hours each. This Liliputian chro-
nology is, indeed, still insisted upon by some antiquated
theologians, and taught in many of the Sunday schools,
even of New England.

The young but lusty science of geology has made
great havoc with this venerable idea : tearing down the
curtain our ignorance had woven, it revealed to our
astonished gaze ages innumerable, stretching away into
the past so far that our mental eyes were strained in the
attempt to see their distant boundary, while marching
through them we beheld a procession of innumerable
life-forms, many of them such as painter never limned
and of which poet never dreamed.

It seems strange to us now, that, with so many marks
of the earth's great age surrounding us, we could ever
have made so grave a mistake as we did. Here are trees
that must have been saplings at the dawn of creation,
supposing that creation to be as- recent as was then
believed ; deltas, such as those at the mouths of the Mis-
sissippi and Ganges, that must have taken at least half a
million of years to form ; canons a mile deep, made by
rivers that must have rolled through them for ages ; and
seven miles of fossiliferous rocks, abounding with the
remains of myriads of strange beings, that could only
have come into existence and become extinct during
periods too large for the human intellect to grasp.

The evidences of man's great antiquity are now as

78 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

clearly presented to the eye of the archaeologist, as that
of the earth's so much greater age is presented to the
vision of the geologist ; so that, as J. P. Leslie says, " we
can regard as perfectly certain that the known historical
period is a mere nothing in point of time, compared
with the periods during which our race has actually
inhabited the earth ; or, as Lyell significantly expresses
it, this historical period is comparatively only a creature
of yesterday. In this opinion all students of the subject
now agree, even those who were formerly the most obsti-
nate of its opponents." Again he says, " My own belief
is but the reflection of the growing sentiment of the
whole geological world, — a conviction strengthening
every day, as you may with little trouble see for your-
selves, by glancing through the magazines of current
scientific literature, — that our race has been upon the
earth for hundreds of thousands of years ! "^

If we had to depend upon tradition alone for our
knowledge of past events, we should be able to look
back but a short distance in the history of humanity.
In this country the great events of the American Revolu-
tion would be vivid in the minds of many, and we might
learn the truth with regard to the most important ; but
the discovery of America by Columbus would exist only
as a faint tradition, and the history of the world before
that time would be all but a perfect blank. In fact, it has

* Man's Origin and Destiny, p. 66,

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 79

been found that tribes having no written records lose the
most important events in their history in a hundred years.

By printed and written documents, handed down from
one generation to another, we can, however, pass up the
stream of time, and mark important events that have
transpired for thousands of years. We thus learn that
Jesus, the Galilaean reformer, lived nearly nineteen cen-
turies ago ; that Socrates, the sage of Greece, died four
centuries before that; that the poet Homer sang about
five centuries earlier ; and that Solomon's reign in Jeru-
salem is separated from our time about twenty-nine
hundred years. All scholars agree that dates received
from written documents prior to this are very uncertain.
The date of Abraham's birth has been placed at about
thirty-five hundred years ago, and this is probably not far
from the truth ; yet, in the time of Abraham, Egypt was
a flourishing nation, with kings and princes, and a civili-
zation of great antiquity.

When written documents fail, monuments and inscrip-
tions, especially those of Egypt, enable us to travel much
farther into humanity's past. The Pyramids of Egypt
are in some respects the most remarkable exhibitions of
man's constructive ability on the globe. The largest
covers about twelve acres : it is four hundred and fifty
feet high, and is estimated to contain more than six
million tons of stone. Lenormant, the French historian,
says of it, " With all the progress of knowledge, it would

8o /S DARWIN RIGHT?

be, even in our days, a problem difficult to solve, to con-
struct, as the Egyptian architects of the fourth dynasty
have done, in such a mass as that of the pyramid, cham-
bers and passages, which, in spite of the millions of tons
IDressing on them, have, for sixty centuries, preserved
their original shape, without crack or flaw."

The age of this pile is uncertain, but may be safely set
at five thousand years. Humboldt makes the following
statement regarding the age of it, and the two pyramids
in its vicinity : " The valley of the Nile, which has occu-
pied so distinguished a place in the history of man, yet
preserves authentic portraits of kings as far back as the
commencement of the fourth dynasty of Manetho. His
dynasty, which embraces the construction of the great
pyramids of Ghiza, Chefren, and Cheops, commences
more than thirty-four hundred years B. C."

But this was in the fourth dynasty of Eg}^ptian kings ;
civilization in Egypt must have been vastly older than
this. Humboldt, referring to the age of that pre-exist-
ing civilization, says, " In the dimness of antiquity, which
constitutes, as it were, the extreme horizon of true histor-
ical knowledge, we see many luminous points or cen-
tres of civilization, simultaneously blending their rays.
Among these we may reckon Egypt, at least five thou-
sand years before our era." ^ Baldwin says, " It is now as
certain as any thing else in ancient history, that Egypt

* Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 114, Harper's edition, 1856.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 8i

existed as a civilized country not less than five thousand
years earlier than the birth of Christ." ^

We are back now nearly seven thousand years, and we
fjnd Egypt is a civilized country ; and this presupposes a
})eriod of many thousand years, during which the people
were passing from a condition of barbarism to that of
civilization. Can any light be shed upon this still more
ancient time ? We find in all civilized countries, where
the materials could be obtained, that man passed suc-
cessively through an age called the stone age, when his
implements were made of stone, and another called the
bronze age, in which they were made of bronze, before
he attained to the iron age and historic civilization. We
have reason to believe that iron was used in Egypt when
the Pyramids were built. But we find bronze chisels in
her ancient mines, and bronze adzes, hatchets, saws, fal-
chions, and battle-axes in her most ancient tombs. Older
than all these, however, was her stone age, when iron,
tin, and copper were alike unknown. Enormous quanti-
ties of flint implements have been discovered in Egypt,
says W. Boyd Dawkins." Sir John Lubbock found flint
implements in Egypt in great numbers, on the slopes of
the hifls, on the lower plateaus, and, "in fact, wherever
flint was abundant and of good quality." Several that
he found resembled those discovered in the gravel-beds
of the Somme.^ Many have been found by other col-

1 Pre-hlstoric Nations, p. 32. ^ Nature, vol. xiii., p. 245.

3 Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. iv., p. 215.

82 IS DAI^lV/iV RIGHT?

lectors ; and it is unquestionable that in the valley of the
Nile, man advanced from gross barbarism, at a time when
a rudely fashioned stone was his only weapon to defend
himself against the wild beasts that must have then
lurked in the valley, step by step, doubtless painfully and
slowly, to brick-moulding, monument-chiselling, pyramid-
raising, and the civilization that characterized him seven
thousand years ago.

The earliest portion of this stone age, judging from
w^hat we know of it in otlier countries, must have been
enormously remote. In England, Wales, Scotland, Ire-
land, on the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Islands,
in Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia,
Greece, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and
Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, China, and Japan, have been
found within the last twenty-five years, hundreds of thou-
sands of arrows, celts, chisels, axes, hammers, knives, and
other articles of stone, which represent the stone age in
human history, long before man had formed the first letter
to record the steps of his progress.

Around the shores of the lakes of Switzerland and
Northern Italy, we can read most clearly the story of the
bronze age and the more recent part of the stone age in
human history ; for during that time human beings occu-
pied houses built on platforms laid upon piles driven into
the lakes around their borders ; and for thousands of
years there they lived, worked, kissed and married, quar-

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. %7^

relied, laughed, wept, and died, dropping from time to
time their tools and utensils into the lake, where they
were covered with mud, and were thus well preserved.
At Morges on Lake Geneva, at Nidau on Lake Bienne,
Estavayer, Cortaillod and Corcelettes, on Lake Neu-
chatel, 4,416 objects of bronze were found, consisting of
axes, knives, lances, sickles, pins, rings, ear-rings, brace-
lets, fish-hooks, (S:c., yet not a particle of iron, and but
few objects of stone. At Morges fifty bronze axes were
found, and not one of stone.

At these places it is evident there were settlements
during the age of bronze. In them lived a people who
melted copper and tin, and cast various bronze articles,
for a bar of tin and moulds for casting have been found.
These people, as we have learned from their remains,
cultivated the soil, domesticated animals, and possessed
the arts of turning pottery and weaving cloth. How
long this was ago we cannot yet tell. It may have been
since the Pyramids were built ; but, if so, we cannot
regard it as long subsequent to that event, for history
knows nothing of these lake-dwellers.

But before them dwelt a people in Switzerland much
more rude, — the men of the stone age. At Wangen on
Lake Constance, Pont de Thiele on Lake Bienne, at
jNIoosedorf on Lake Moosedorf, and at Wauwyl on
Lake Lucerne, there have been collected 3,994 articles
made of stone and bone, axes, flakes, whetstones, corn-

S4 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

crushers, axe-handles, awls, &c., yet not a single article
of bronze or iron. M. Lohle found at Wangan, on Lake
Constance, eleven hundred axes, one hundred whet-
stones, one hundred and fifty corn-crushers, two hundred
and sixty arrow-heads and flint-flakes, besides three hun-
dred and fifty articles of bone, and one hundred of
earthenware, and yet not a trace of metal.

These were a ruder people : they cut down trees by
burning around them, and cutting off the charred por-
tion wirh their stone axes ; their pottery is very rude and
coarse ; the potter's wheel was unknown, and the baking
was poorly done : the only ornamentation consists of
simple lines or furrows. They were by no means sav-
ages : they practised spinning and weaving to a certain
extent, and made rude cloth of flax ; they had domesti-
ca'"ed the dog, pig, horse, f^oat, sheep, and at least two
kindh, of oxen. They fed very largely on the flesh of
wild animals ; among thf.m the urus, or great fossil ox,
the bison, the elk, the stag, and the wild boar, which are
no longer found in Switzerland, and the beaver, bear, and
ibex, which are now rare. The Swiss archaeologists gen-
erally assign to this stone period an age of from five to
seven thousand years.

Many of the stone tools and weapons found in the Swiss
lakes, and which represent this age, are very well formed,
and others were finished by laborious rubbing and polish-
ing. There was, however, a still older period in human

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 85

Tiistory, when all the stone weapons and implements were
rude and unpolished. The time when the Swiss lakes
were occupied by men who were in the stone age, and the
time when men carefully fabricated and polished their arti-
cles of stone, has been called the neolithic age, or the new
stone age ; and the older tmie, when they made only rude
and unpolished weapons, has been called the paleolithic
age, or the old stone age ; and this carries us very much
farther into the past. When we go backward to the old
stone age in France, Belgium, and Great Britain, we find
ourselves in a strange land, and in strange company.
S'.icep and goats are entirely v/anting ; the hog is very
rare, and there is no reason to think it was domesticated ;
while the remains of strange animals, some of which are
only strange, however, in those countries, are found in
great abundance, such as the mammoth, reindeer, musk-
ox, ibex, marmot, chamois, and the woolly rhinoceros,
indicating a very cold climate ; and the cave-lion, cave-
tiger, cave-hyena, machairodus, hippopotamus, and other
species of rhinoceroses and elephants, in all probability
smooth-skinned, indicating a warmer climate, and one
even warmer than exists to-day in the countries where we
find these remains.

We thus find the paleolithic age naturally dividing
itself into two periods, in the former of which the
climate was very much colder than it is now, like that
of Northern Greenland and Lapland, and the other in

86 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

which it was considerably warmer, something Hke that of
Southern Africa. The cold period, we have good reason
to believe, was the glacial period, and the warm period
was pre-glacial, or pliocene tertiary, before the winter of
the ages came on.

In caves of France, Belgium, and Great Britain, have
been found in great abundance implements of stone and
bone, associated with the remains of various arctic ani-
mals, showing us that man must have lived in the heart
of Belgium and France a life very similar to that of the
Esquimaux, surrounded as he was by similar conditions
to those that surround them ; while in the same countries
we find abundant evidence of his occupation of those
lands during the previous warmer time, when the hippo-
potamus bathed in the Tees and the Humber, when
gigantic elephants wandered through the woods of
France and England, when lions lurked in their caves,
and various species of the rhinoceros wallowed in their
pools.

From Mr. Pengelly's careful study of the formation of
stalagmite in Kent's Cave in Devonshire, England, he
calculates for the formation of five feet of it, which cov-
ers up implements that were deposited by man, and the
bones of extinct animals, no less a period than three
hundred thousand years.^ This may be an extravagant

' Lecture of William Pengelly, F.R.S., on the time that has elapsed since
the era of the cave-men of Devonshire.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

estimate ; but the stalagmite covering represents but a
small portion of the period of man's occupancy of the
South of England, as presented in this cave. I have
seen the beds of gravel in the neighborhood of Abbe-
ville, from which M. de Perthes obtained so many flint
weapons (Fig. 32), in connection with the remains of the

Fig. 32. — Spear of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, from the gravel-beds of

Abbeville, France. (Original.)

elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, &c. ; and I have no
doubt that those weapons lay on the banks of the Somme
during the pre-glacial time, as I have seen innumerable
chert weapons lying on the banks of American streams,
and that they, when the ice suddenly melted that lay over
the country to the north during the glacial period, were
swept by the waters of the swollen river into the old bed
of the stream, now the gravel deposit, where they are
discovered at the present time. I think no geologist can
place the commencement of the glacial period nearer to
our own time than a hundred thousand years, and then

88 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

he must tliink there is a strong probabiHty of its being
much more remote.

Still more ancient must be the remains of man, found
in pliocene beds of California. Professor J. D. Whitney,
in a lecture delivered in Cambridge, Mass., thus refers to
the most ancient human remains known to us at the
present time : " During the pHocene, California and Ore
gon became the theatre of the most tremendous volcanic
activity that has devastated the surface of the globe.
The valleys of the rivers in the Sierra were filled, and
much of the country, particularly toward the north of
California, was entirely buried in lava and ashes. Since
then the rivers, seeking new channels, have made for
themselves deep canons, leaving their old beds deeply
buried under the lava. These old buried river-gravels
are very rich in gold, and extensive tunnelling into the
sides of the mountains and under the old lavas has been
done. In one of these old river-bottoms, under the
solid basalt of Table Mountain, many relics of human
art have been obtained." In 1866 a skull was found
on Bald Mountain, near Angels, in Calaveras County, one
hundred and thirty feet from the surface, under four beds
of lava, and in close proximity to a petrified tree.

" The age of these deposits under the lavas is known
to be pliocene, on account of the remains of the contem-
poraneously buried flora and fauna, which were almost
totally unlike the flora and fauna of California at the

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

present time. That the skull was found in these old,

intact, cemented gravels, has been abundandy proved by

evidence that cannot be

gainsaid. At the time it

came into the speaker's

hands, the skull was still

embedded in a great

measure in its originally

gravelly matrix. ... In

and about the skull were

found other human bones, "^^^H

including some that must ^^^- 33- — Calaveras County Skull. Care-
fully drawn from a photograph.

have belonged to an in-
fant." (Fig. ^2>-)

When lecturing at Sonora, near where the skull was
found, I visited the spot, and talked with men who were
conversant with the facts regarding its discovery, and
became satisfied that there is no reasonable doubt of its
genuineness. We only need to glance at the position of
the skull (Fig. 34), and learn the facts regarding the age
of the beds that lie above it, to learn that man's age upon
this planet is immense. Professor Whitney sums up the
facts in connection with the discovery of human remains
and relics in ancient Californian deposits, in language of
which the following is a portion : " There is a large body
of evidence, the strength of which it is impossible to
deny, which seems to prove that man existed in Califor-

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

1.
I
4

8
%

nia previous to the cessation of volcanic activity in the
Sierra Nevada, to the epoch of the greatest extension of
the glaciers in that region, and to the erosion of the pres-
ent river canons and valleys, at
a time when the animal and
vegetable creations differed en-
tirely from what they now are,
and when the topographical
features of the State were ex-
tremely unlike those exhibited
by the present surface." ^ Man
in California saw a lava stream
flow for forty miles down the
bed of the old Stanislaus River ;
and we now see that lava stream,
in consequence of the wearing-
down of the surrounding rocks,
a mountain, known as the Table
Mountain. "There has been,
therefore," says Whitney, " an

Ir ■ .;' .•.-.•.*.■--.. .,-.-.

■*^^J\^,§^^^^^<VxX^^

Fig. 34. — Bed in which the Ca-
laveras County skull was found.
I. black lava, 40 ft.; 2. grav-
el, 3 ft.; 3. light lava, 30 ft.;
4. gravel, 5 ft.; 5. light lava,
15 ft.; 6. gravel, 25 ft.; 7.

dark brown lava, 9 ft.; 8. amount of dcnudatiou during

gravel, 5 ft. (in this bed the

skull was found) ; 9. red lava, the pCHOd sinCC this VOlcauic

4 ft.; 10. gravel, 17 ft.; 11. 4. i v ^

gj^^g mass took its present position,

of not less than three or four
thousand feet of perpendicular depth." " The rock that

^ Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California, by J. D. Whitney,
p. 288.

2 Geological Survey of California, vol. i., p. 244.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 91

has thus been denuded is principally hard slate ; but the
trap of Table Mountain seems almost indestructible by
time. It stands to-day a monument of man's immense
age on our planet, for many human relics have been found
under it in various places ; and we see that there has
been, in all probability, hundreds of thousands of years
for man to advance, from the brutality that must have
characterized him at his advent, to that civilization which
is represented by the monuments of ancient Egypt.

BRUTAL CHARACTERISTICS.

Lastly, the brutal characteristics of man at an early
stage of his existence is direct proof of his natural
origin. If man was created by miracle, the earliest
specimens of the race we should naturally expect to find
the most perfect specimens that the world has seen, as
nearest to him who came perfect from the hand of his
maker : but, if he was evolved from an ape-like ancestor,
we should expect to find the characteristics of the brute
appearing with greater distinctness in proportion to his
antiquity ; and this is what the facts demonstrate.

Let us hear what Professor Wilson says of the ancient
man of Britain, or, as he calls him, " the primeval
Briton : " " Intellectually he appears to have been in
nearly the lowest stage to which an intelligent being can
sink ; morally he was the slave of superstitions, the
grovelling character of which can be partially inferred

92 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

from the indications of his sepulchral rites ; . . . his
cerebral development was poor; . . . the few imple-
ments that ministered to his limited necessities disclose
only the first rudiments of that inventive ingenuity which
distinguishes the reason of man from the instincts of the
brutes." ^ Neither saints nor i\pollos were those ances-
tors of ours ; and those who so much dislike to hear of
our relationship to brutes may be ready to deny that
these wretched creatures were of our kin.

Prichard says, " I have seen about half a dozen skulls
found in different parts of England, in situations which
rendered it highly probable that they belonged to ancient
Britons. All these partook of one striking characteristic,
namely, a remarkable narrowness of the forehead com-
pared with the occiput, giving a very small space to the
anterior lobes of the brain, and allowing room for a large
development of the posterior lobes." ^ But just in the
very way that they differed from existing British skulls,
that made them so remarkable to Prichard, did they
resemble the skull of the ape, which also gives a small
space to the anterior lobes, where the man-brain lies, and
allows room for a large development of the posterior
lobes, in which the brute-brain is lodged. These old
Britons, then, were so much nearer to the brute than the
modern ones, that their skulls tell the story at a glance.

1 Pre-historic Annals of Scotland, vol. i., p. 40.

2 History of Mankind, vol. ii., p. 92.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 93

"Abbe Frere, canon of the cathedral of Paris, has
lately formed a collection of ancient skulls, sent to him
from all parts of Europe, and has deduced from a com-
parison of them the general conclusion, that, in propor-
tion as the skulls belonged to an ancient and primitive
race, in the same proportion the frontal region is flat-
tened, and the occipital developed." ^ The older the
skulls, the more brutal were the men that carried
them.

Marcel de Serres says, " The human skulls found in
various parts of Germany, in caves, or in drift deposits,
are altogether different from those of the present inhabit-
ants of the country." Some, he says, resemble those of
negroes, others the crania of the ancient inhabitants
of Chili and Peru. Professor Spring says of these cra-
nia, " The pieces of human skull show that the forehead
was short and much inchned."

Professor Schaffhausen, on the primitive form of the
human skull, concludes with these words : " We may
regard it as beyond doubt that a skull which does not
bear the signs of a low organization cannot be regarded
as derived from primeval man, even though it may have
been found among the bones of extinct animals. . . .
We must now place the man of the primeval time a step
lower than the rudest savages of the actual world.

' Dr. Laycock, Mind and Brain.

2 Man in the Past, Present, and Future, Biichner, p. 266.

11 2

94 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

Again he remarks, ''The shape of the forehead of
the Neanderthal skull (Fig. 35), the dentition and the
form of the lower jaw from La Naulette, and the progna-
thism of some children's jaws of the stone age of West-
ern Europe, excel in animal-resemblance any thing of
this kind among living savages."^

Fig. 35. — Comparison of Forms of Skulls, i. European; 2. Neanderthal; 3.

Chimpanzee. (After Lj-ell.)

Paul Broca, the anthropologist, says, "Thus we have
arrived at the most ancient known epoch in the life of
mankind. What were at that time the physical charac-
ters of man? The bones of the members which have
been found prove that the stature was of little height ;
and though the skulls, or remains of skulls, are still quite
rare, it may be considered as very nearly demonstrated
that our predecessors of the quaternary had the head
small, with retreating forehead and oblique jaws." He
further says, that, from the evidence furnished, the qua-
ternary man takes his place "below the lowest types of

^ Man in the Past, Present, and Future, Biichner, p. 266.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 95

Australia and New Caledonia, . . . and thus diminishes
the interval which separates him from his zoological
neighbors." ^

Several ape-hke lower human jaws have been found of
great antiquity. One of these is called the jaw of La
Naulette, since it was found in a cave of that name, in
Belgium. A fragment of a worked reindeer's horn was
found with it, and its age is probably that of the glacial
time. It was found at a depth of about ten feet, in a
deposit of river-loam. The canine teeth are remarkably
wide and large, as in lower mammals, the three hinder
molars are of the same relative sizes as they are gen-
erally found in the higher apes, and its prognathism is
very great. Profj^'SLsor Schaffhausen says, " It shows a
clearly animal prognathism in the absence of a chin,
a feature so important in the expression of the human
countenance." Dr. Carter, in a report to the London
Anthropological Society, after comparing it with more
than three thousand jaws of various races of men, says
it presents characters which ally it to those of the col-
ored races of men, especially the Australian, or even
beyond what is found in them, and he will not " venture
to deny its indubitable similarity to the jaw of a young
ape." 2

1 Transactions of Anthropological Fociety of Paris. Smithsonian Report,
1868, p. 306.

a Biichner's Alan in llic Past, Present, an^ Fuivive, p. 307.

96 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Another jaw, found in a cave in Burgundy, at Arcy-
sur-Aube, associated with the bones of extinct animals,
possesses all the essential characters of the jaw of La
Naulette, though to a less degree. " A human lower
jaw, found in the cave of Frontal, associated with rein-
deer-bones, is remarkable for the size of the molars, and
the extraordinary thickness of the bone in the molar
region." ^ A human jaw found at Ipswich, in Suffolk,
England, regarded as of high antiquity, manifests a very
low structure.

I have opened several mounds in various parts of the
West, and have examined a great many ancient Ameri-
can skulls, and have never seen, among the most brutal
people of this continent, any with heads as deficient in
intellectual development as most of those must have
been. The frontal bone of a skull in my possession,
taken from a mound west of Minneapolis, represents
the most brutal of all skulls that I have ever seen or
heard of.

The older the implements are that we discover, and
the ruder their form, the older the people, the more
barbarous their practices ; and we now know that in
Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Italy, Sicily, and
other European countries, the men of the early stone
age practised cannibalism, for the remains of their
human feasts have been found in all these locahties.

* Buchner's Man in ihe Past, Present, and Future, p. 307.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 97

Then murder could have been no crime, and benevo-
lence no virtue. It is evident that the chasm between
man and the brute, could we go back to the earliest
specimens of our race, must have been so narrow, that
not the slightest necessity existed for calling in the aid
of miracle to span its space.

These pointers, like so many rays, direct us to the
grand truth from which they proceed, — the natural origin
of all organic beings, and therefore of man, who ap-
peared on the tree of life when it was fully grown, as
naturally as an apple appears upon an apple-tree when
conditions have been favorable for its development.

OBJECTIONS TO MAN's NATURAL ORIGIN.

The too common reply to arguments of this character
is that of ridicule. " Oh, that is it ! we have some ex-
tinct ape for our father, and a silurian sea-worm for our
grandfather : how thankful we should be to those scien-
tific gentlemen, who have rescued from oblivion those
illustrious ancestors of ours ! " I know of no evolutionist
who believes that man was evolved from any of the exist-
ing species of apes ; yet, if we could see the brutal ances-
tors that fathered humanity, we should doubdess call
them apes. But, if man did not come into existence as
a modification of some pre-existing and inferior being,
how was it done ? Shall we be told that man was made
out of dust ? It then follows that we have dust for a man's

98 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

father, and rock for his grandfather ; and this is certainly
no improvement upon the evolutionist's pedigree. But
we are told that man was made by God. There is no
objection to this, if a rational idea goes with the word.
If by God is meant a mighty mechanic, who manipulates
dust or mud, moulding it into a man as a sculptor his
clay model, there is no single fact in the history of the
planet or of man that indicates the existence of any such
being. But if by God is meant nature, all that is, or the
ever-present and ever-operative spirit of the universe, then
man was doubtless made by God, and made out of dust.
But it is far from the dust to the man, and it has passed
through myriads of forms to arrive at the man. "Yes,
but I believe," says the accepter of miracles, " that man
was made instantly and full-grown." But, if man was
made instantly and full-grown, how were the other forms
of life made? Were they also made full-grown in an
instant, " whales in their bigness," birds full-feathered,
horses with six-year-old teeth? If they were, there still
remains to be accounted for the mighty host that rioted
in water and air and on land during the geologic ages.
Were all the specific forms of the geologic times created
full-grown? The Silurian beds contain species of sea-
weeds, corals, star-fish, crinoids, trilobites, shells, and
fishes, that are never found in the Devonian beds above
them nor in the Cambrian and Laurentian beds below.
So the Devonian beds contain thousands of species of

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 99

plants, corals, shells, and crustaceans, no vestige of which
has ever been found in the carboniferous beds above
them. Every geologic formation has its characteristic
species that are never found outside of it : one by one
old forms die out, as the stars go down in the west ; and
one by one new types of life come into being, till the old
are all gone, and all forms are new. But this is not only
true of the great formations, like the Silurian and Devo-
nian : it is equally true of every group of rocks into which
the formations are divided. In the Potsdam sandstone,
the lowest group of the Silurian in the United States, we
find protozoans, radiates, mollusks, and articulates of
many species, that are never found in the calciferous
sandstone, the next group above it ; the calciferous sand-
stone contains fossils that are not to be found in the
Trenton limestone that overlies it ; and the Trenton con-
tains hundreds of species that are never seen in the
Niagara, Clinton, and Onondaga groups of the upper
Silurian. Does any man suppose that by miraculous
creation, when the Potsdam sandstone was laid down, a
few small shells were made and planted in a sandy coast,
a few unbranching sea-weeds on the wave-washed rock,
and a number of trilobites sent swimming over the water,
but in the time of the calciferous sandstone, the old
forms having died out, a new set of seaweeds were cre-
ated and planted with longer and branching stems, a new
set of shells with extra whorls, and a number of new

lOO /s DARWIN RIGHT?

trilobites with shorter tails and narrower heads ? The man
who entertains such an idea must beheve in a new crea-
tion for every new island and lake, as well as for every
geological group, during the whole past period of our
planet's history, — and all this for nothing; for a miracle-
worker could have blown the planet cool in one moment,
and set man upon a finished world in the next. Profess-
or Owen, referring to the fact that all the old coral polyps
had four rays or multiples of four, and all the recent ones
six, or multiples of six, says, " These grand old groups
have had their day, and are utterly gone. When we en-
deavor to conceive or realize the miraculous mode of
origin, not of these only, but of their manifold success-
ors, the miracle by the very multiplication of its manifes-
tations becomes incredible, inconsistent with any worthy
conception of an all-seeing, all-provident omnipotence.
It is not above, but against, reason ; and I may assume
the special primary creative hypothesis of the successive
and co-existing species of anthozoa to be not now held
by the scientific naturalist." But if scientific naturalists
do not believe that the different species of anthozoa, or
coral animals, were created by miracle, how can they
believe that other species of animals, in which the dif-
ference can hardly be considered greater, were created
by miracle, such as the different species of trilobites and
cephalopods that crowded the ancient seas? and if these
were not created by miracle, what forms of life were ? It

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. lOi

is safe to say, that, as to the gaze of all intelligent persons,
miracle has vanished from the earth as we now behold
it, so will it vanish from the earth of all the geologic
past, and it will be universally acknowledged that the
earth is alive, in consequence of the living spirit that
embraces every atom, and that it clothes itself with plants
and produces animals as naturally as a tree clothes itself
with leaves and produces blossoms and fruits.

But I hear another objection : "That we are the de-
scendants of apes, is one of the most debasing thoughts
that ever entered the human mind ; and it shows to what
depths of degradation men will sink when they depart
from the living truth." Well, if we are not descended
from some animal bearing a strong resemblance to living
apes, how did we come into existence? The answer I
hear is, " Man was created in the fulness of time, the
world having been made and prepared for his advent,
not in the image of a brutal ape, but in the image of
God his maker ; for the Word declares, ' in the image of
God created he him.' " Then I see that magnificent man :
upright as a palm, with a forehead more perfect than that
of Apollo ; no passion had ever distorted his noble coun-
tenance, no lie had ever passed out of the gate of his
ruby lips ; intelligence beams from his eyes ; and, as he
walks, we say, "There goes a god." And his companion !
language fails us to describe her : the lily and the rose
vie for supremacy upon her cheeks, her eyes are briglit

102 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

as the evening star, her breath is sweeter than the violet's
scent, and her voice more melodious than a choir of.
angels. I see the lovely pair as they walk through a para-
dise of ravishing beauty, the boughs of the trees bending
as they pass, that they may partake of their blushing
fruit : daily they live in the smile of God and one another.
Then I look over the earth, and behold humanity as it
now is : sooty skins, thick hps, flat noses, wedge-shaped
foreheads, apish arms, hairy bodies, spindle shanks, pro-
tuberant bellies, and faces that seem as if some farcical
fiend had made them ; while their minds and habits are
in harmony with their bodies, tobacco-poisoned mouths,
betel-stained lips, alcohol-fired brains, born thieves, rest-
less murderers, souls in which passion rages like a furious
storm and the brute is master of the man. And all this
in less than six thousand years ! At the same rate of de-
gradation where will our offspring be in six thousand more
years ? Some of them chattering monkeys, fighting with
their hairy brothers among the wild-orange groves of
Florida ; in six thousand more, grunting hogs, pushing
each other for the mast that autumn shakes to the
ground ; then, slimy reptiles crawling over the ruins
where men have been ; others, retaining the human form,
sink in iniquity till the earth becomes one vast pande-
monium of brutality and crime, and God in his mercy at
last purifies the world by fire, and a bottomless pit swal-
lows the degraded remnant of the race.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 103

But if from invisible gelatinous globules, that floated
in the primal seas, life has advanced to crawling worm,
balancing fish, hopping batrachian, tree-climbing marsu-
pial, mimicking ape, to the men and women of this age,
what may we not be in the ages to come ? Ihere is no
song of an angel too sweet for us to sing, no glory that
a God can bestow that we shall be unworthy to receive.
The " degrading idea " appears to be very decidedly on
the other side of this question.

*/ Then I hear, " missing link," " see the immense chasm
that separates man from the brute, a chasm that none but
a God by miracle could bridge." There stands a pillar
two hundred feet high, and on the summit I see a man ;
but, what surprises me, there is nothing visible by which
he could have attained the eminence. I say to the
by-standers, " How did the man get on the top of the
pillar? " — "I can tell you," replies one, "just how it was
done : an angel came down from heaven, took him by
the hair of the head, and set him on top of the pillar."
This does not appear reasonable to me, and I approach
the pillar, to discover the way in which he ascended :
on reaching the other side, I find a ladder, reaching from
the ground to the summit, but I notice that some of the
rounds are wanting ; there is one space where the rounds
are eight feet apart, and near the top there is a gap of
full twelve feet. I return, and say to my informant, " I
have discovered how the man got to the top of the

I04 /S DAK WIN RIGHT?

pillar." — '' Oh ! " says he, " I know very well how he got
there," — " But there is a ladder on the other side of that
pillar, and it is infinitely more likely that he climbed to
the top by a ladder than that he ascended in any such
way as you teach." — " I do not beheve in your ladders,"
he replies : " I tell you an angel came down from heaven,
lifted him up by the hair of the head, and placed him on
the pillar." — " Did you see the angel do this ? " — " No : I
cannot say that I saw the angel do it." — " Have you seen
any one that did see the angel do it? " — " No : I cannot
even say that." — " How, then, do you know that an angel
did this?" — "There is no other way in which the man
could get up, and an angel must have elevated him." —
"Yes," I say, "but here is a ladder: will you not come
and look at it?" At last he moves a few steps, and,
casting a side-glance at the ladder, as if he were afraid of
it, says, "Do you call that thing a ladder?" — "Yes," I
reply, " I call that a ladder." He answers, " Look at the
gaps, see the missing rounds : I tell you no man could
ever climb that pillar by any such arrangement. Here is
a space fifteen feet wide, another twenty, and still another,
most important of all, at the very top, thirty feet wide.
I tell you an angel came down from heaven, and elevated
him to the top of the pillar, or he never could have got
there." But while he is speaking, I am looking, and see
something sticking out of the ground that attracts my
attention. I pull, and out comes one of the missing

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 105

rounds, which, when applied, fits in one of the vacant
places exactly. I turn, to call the attention of my
friend; but he is striding off, and as he goes I hear,
"Missing links — great gaps — man — angel," till his
voice is lost in the distance.

So stands the subject of man's origin. There is man
on the summit of the organic pillar, and extending from
the very dust of the ground to him is the ladder of life.
The miraculous origin of man is the angel-elevating
theory, and has scarcely any thing beside its age to rec-
ommend it. Here in the ladder are the rounds of pro-
tozoan, articulate, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, lower
mammal, higher mammal, man, and a multitude of
intermediate forms. But we hear of " missing links."
Certainly, how could it be otherwise ? A hundred years
ago, and we did not know of the existence of the chain,
nor dream that there were any links : now we are find-
ing new links every year. Once the space between the
reptile that crawls, and the bird that flies, was immense ;
but the discovery in the Jurassic beds of the pterodactyle,
a flying, bird-like lizard, the archeopteryx, a feathered
animal with teeth, and a long, vertebrated tail (Fig. -^d),
the ichthyornis and the hesperornis, in the cretaceous
beds of Kansas, the odontopteryx in the London clay
(Fig. 37), birds' with teeth that ally them to the reptiles,
has furnished us with the links that almost unite those
widely divergent types ; and we may yet find, extrava-

io6

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

gant as it may appear, every link of the chain that
unites monad and man.

Fig. 36. — Archeopteryx Macroura, restored. (After Owen.)

Another objection that has been urged is, that we see
no such changes now. It is presented in this form : " If
men were ever developed from monkeys, why are they

not developed now ? "
And the questioner
seems to expect, that,
for the development
theory to be true, by
watching an orang-
outang for a few hours
he might see the bowed form become erect, the sloping
forehead expand, the hair drop, and the being hold out
his hand and inquire, "Am I not a man and a brother?"

Fig. 37. — Skull of Odontopteryx Toliapicus,
restored. (After Owen.)

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MA AT. 107

Not thus does development proceed. Here is a clock, the
minute-pointer of which makes a revokition in a thou-
sand years. We look at it at noon, and again at night,
but observe no apparent change : we see it next day
and the next week, but the pointer, to all appearance,
has never moved : we should naturally believe that the
clock was standing; yet in a thousand years it sweeps
the entire face of the dial, and in a million years a
thousand times. If all species of animals gave birth to
new species at the same rate, by a process so slow as to ^
be imperceptible, within the space of a geologic period
every animal would have produced thousands of new
species. A clock might be constructed in which the
minute-pointer would be immovable for a thousand years,
and then make the revolution of the dial in an instant.
Under such circumstances, those unaware of its peculiar
mechanism, and unable, while they looked, to see a
movement, would have but little faith in any statement
of change that had taken place in the position of the
hands.

Suppose we have never seen a new species come into
being, which is not strictly correct : neither have we seen
a new mountain-chain heaved, a new river-valley worn
out, nor a new geological formation laid down ; but by
careful examination we can see the processes at work, by
which all these are being accomplished. A worm, eating
into the heart of an apple in the autumn, is told by its

io8 IS DAK WIN RIGHT?

neighbor, when it inquires where apples came from, that
they are formed from blossoms, and that the blossoms
are modified leaves. " Why don't we see blossoms turn
into fruit, and leaves into blossoms, now?" says the worm.
The answer is, " Because it would take a longer time to
observe the process than the life of a worm would fur-
nish ; " and on the tree of life the transformation from
one species to another may take a longer time than the
life of a man, or even of a nation, furnishes.

A strong objection against the natural origin of man
is this : " If man came from the brute, then like the
brute man will die." If the brute becomes extinct at
death, which is by no means certain, it would not follow
that man would also cease to exist. Here is a green
apple : we take out its undeveloped seeds, and plant
them, but they die, and are resolved into dust. Here is
a ripe apple : we take out the seeds, and bury them ;
they do not die ; sending rootlets downward, and shoots
upward, they grow into perfect trees. Between those
seeds that did not grow, and these that do grow, there is
an infinite difference, and yet what makes it? A little
more sunshine, a longer connection with the tree and its
vitalizing sap, and life has obtained a hold on the seed
that can bid defiance to the wet of the autumn, the cold
of the winter, the wind of the spring, and even make
helpers of these to enable the seed to develop into the
tree. In like manner I can imagine a pair of anthropo-

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 109

morphous apes, somewhat superior to the gorilla, brutes,
if you please, that would cease to exist at death, under
favorable conditions giving birth to a being superior to
themselves, with a more expanded front brain, born of
necessity a brute, but ripening into the man, so that at
death his spirit bids defiance to the elements, and enters
into the spirit realm, the first of earth's inhabitants to
occupy the fair abode.

Lasdy, it has been said that those who advocate evolu-
tion are desirous of driving God out of the world, and so
reducing man to the level of the brutes, from which they
believe him to have been derived. The belief in a me-
chanical or day-laboring God must die with increasing
intelligence, and it is worse than useless to attempt to
save it ; but this is no hap-hazard world, nor is man a
mere come-by-chance. We are not the accidental re-
sult of a million accidents, each fortunately, yet accident-
ally, contributing to the grand result. Nor is man a
grand ruin, the beauty of whose fragments reveals the per-
fection of the original structure. No almighty architect
built after his eternal designs a magnificent palace, whose
beauty made even celestial on-lookers rejoice, and then
permitted a moral earthquake to shatter it, so that noth-
ing but a divine re-creation could ever restore its pristine
perfection.

But there is a spirit in the universe, and what for want
of a better word we must call an intelligent spirit : without

no IS DARWIN RIGHT?

this it is inconceivable that we could have had this living,
growing, intelligence-permeated planet, that adorns itself
with grassy blade and tinted flower ; without this how
could organized life have developed like a tree, leafed in
the vertebrates, blossomed in the lower mammals, and
fruited in humanity, which loses its sourness as the ages
pass, becoming more sweet and juicy as it ripens in the
beams of a sun that shines upon all and never sets?

If intelligence is necessary to build a house, and to
construct a watch, how much more to produce a man !
his eye, that drinks in light from stars so distant that
the light by which we behold them left them before the
Pyramids were reared ; his ears that catch the insect's
lazy hum as readily as the thunder's diapason ; his think-
ing, hoping, loving soul, with its deep yearnings, its grand
questionings, its explorations from beyond the Milky Way
to the infinitesimal points that float in a drop. If it took
a hundred million years to fashion man, is the wisdom,
the power, any less than if he had been shaped out of
mud in a moment? If in man's production a million mil-
lion forms were brought into existence, each nearer to
him than its predecessor, is the work any less than if in
a moment miraculous fingers had moulded his wondrous
frame? Infinite, unseen, intelligent spirit, life of our life,
spirit of our spirit, to understand thee we need to be
infinite as thou art. " Nearer to thee," will be our prayer
as the ages of the future bear us on.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 1 1

It is true that some evolutionists have advanced very
fanciful theories to account for the origin of life and man.
Darwin's theory of life's commencement upon our globe
will not bear very close scrutiny. He thinks it probable
that " all the organic beings which have ever lived on this
earth have descended from some one primordial form,
into which life was first breathed by the Creator." ^ That
all living beings have descended from one form is the
only reasonable supposition, if we accept of undirected
variation and natural selection as the grand agents in the
production of species. All living beings have too much in
common to be the product of originally different organic
forms, accidentally operated upon by surrounding modi-
fying circumstances. But when we attempt to reahze the
actual performance, there is nothing in the wildest myths
that have come down to us from the darkest ages less
scientific or less reasonable.

It must have been in the Laurentian or pre-Laurentian
age when it was done. The earth is prepared, after ages
of conflict between fire and water, for the advent of life.
Here is the warm, shallow ocean that laves the entire
globe, with only here and there dark, hilly islands that
dot its surface. Life has no chance upon the land, it is
too hot for its sustentation ; and the ocean is its only pos-
sible home. Mr. Darwin does not inform us whether he
believes the Creator made the original progenitor of all

1 Supplement to Origin of Species.

112 IS DAKWnV RIGHT?

living beings, and then breathed into it the breath of hfc,
or whether it was produced spontaneously without life,
and then life was breathed into it. If the former, then
we have the Creator making, breathing into, and dropping
into the water, the lonely protozoic Adam, that is to be
" the father of all living," a microscopic gelatinous
globule, the single tenant of a boundless ocean. Is this
conceivable? The creation of Adam out of dust is
infinitely more so. If the Adamic protozoan came into
existence spontaneously, but destitute of life, we have the
strange fact of life's product preceding life itself; for the
body of even a protozoan must be as much the product
of life as the body of a whale. Imagine a Creator breath-
ing life into a non-living protozoan, nothing miraculous
done for the world during all the preceding ages, nothing
miraculous done for it since. A lonely protozoan, desti-
tute of a companion till it spontaneously divides, starts
on its journey without map or guide, all one whether it
becomes a griffin or a god. He who breathed into it the
breath of life, utterly indifferent to its fate, though he has
worked a miracle to bring it into existence, sends it out
to be operated upon by " temperature, food, moisture,"
and " surrounding circumstances " in general ; the result
of which is mollusk and fish, reptile and bird, mammal,
and man, with his forehead to the sky, and his soul read-
ing the book of the universe. Nothing more improbable
was ever dreamed, nothing less reasonable was ever writ-
ten.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 113

Follow this protozoic and protoplasmic Adam. He
becomes constricted in the middle; the constriction
deepens and widens till it divides the verdant ball in two,
and now there is a pair, identical in every respect. Each
of them becomes the parent of a child, his very image,
for he is his half. What chance is there for this self-
dividing protozoan to take the next organic step ? About
the same chance that there is by planting willow-slips to
raise an orange-tree. Leave out spiritual direction in the
development of life, and the wisest man is as helpless to
account for what we behold as the unschooled child.

My opinion is that in every atom of every organized
being is a perfect spiritual type, constantly seeking per-
fect expression in material form. When conditions are
unfavorable the resultant individuals are imperfect, and
become more imperfect when the conditions become
more unfavorable, as the ancestor of the a^nblyopsis be-
came blind by a life in the Mammoth Cave ; and when
conditions are favorable the individuals approach nearer
the perfect type, as the human race becomes more per-
fect with every generation, being constantly surrounded
by more perfect conditions. A fragment of the leaf of a
begonia, with proper treatment, will make a complete
plant ; a newt renews its limbs when they are cut off, and
a mince-meat piece of a hydra will grow into a whole
animal. This is not so very remarkable if the tendency
to form the individual resides in every atom ; but, unless

114 fS DARWIN RIGHT?

there is a spiritual type within every portion of the hydra,
what directs the growth of the fraction, develops its tenta-
cles, and endows the perfect animal with intelligence ne-
cessary to lasso its prey? We have not yet seen perfect
apples, pears, grapes, corn, or wheat ; the perfect horse,
bos, sheep, dog, and man has yet to appear : but these
have been advancing toward perfection for millions of
years, and will, I think, become counterparts of their
spiritual ideals before our planet cleaves to its centre, and
dies. An apple grown in a bottle can be made into the
shape of a cylinder ; an oak can be dwarfed to a tree
twelve inches high, and yet bear acorns ; the forehead of
a child can be pressed into the shape of an inclined plane,
and the body of a fashionable lady can be made to re-
semble an hour-glass. Yet in all these cases the tendency
remains to produce the perfect form. Break the bottle,
and the apple commences to swell in the middle and
assume the rotund shape of its neighbors ; feed the
dwarfed oak liberally, and give its roots room, and it be-
gins at once to tower; take off the corset, and the
waist of a lady becomes more like that of a woman. So,
through all the early geologic ages, the tendency to pro-
duce our grains, fruits, birds, beasts, and men existed ;
but the surrounding conditions were unfavorable for their
production, and low and imperfect types were the result.
Early types of life have vanished, because the conditions
that rendered them possible have departed, and new

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 115

types have come into being, as improved conditions ren-
dered higher expressions of the perfect spiritual type pos-
sible. Were the conditions surrounding us absolutely
perfect, then man would also be, and ugliness, misery,
and sin would be unknown.

MAN'S SPIRITUAL ORIGIN.

It would seem at this time that among thoroughly
intelligent people there is no room for doubt of man's
natural origin. But to endow matter with the ability to
make a living world and a thinking man, is to endow it
with all but infinite power and absolute wisdom. There
is evidently that in the universe which the knife of the
anatomist cannot reveal, which the most delicate test of
the chemist cannot detect, which the human eye by the
aid of the most perfect instrument can never hope to see.
It accomplishes with apparently the greatest ease what
the combined power and intelligence of all humanity
would shrink from attempting : even the leaf of an oak
mocks the artists of a world. This in the universe, whose
operation is everywhere visible, but whose essence for-
ever eludes us, is infinitely more potent than all else ; as
much superior to what our senses reveal as that which
sees is to the eye of a dead man, as that which thinks
is to the phosphorus we apply to our matches. I call

ii6 /s DARWIN RIGHT?

this the infinite spirit, to whose influence, infinitely more
than all else, we owe our existence upon this planet, the
laws of nature being merely its methods of operation.

POINTERS INDICATING MAN'S SPIRITUAL

ORIGIN.

As there are pointers that indicate the natural and
brute origin of man, so there are pointers that indicate
man's spiritual and divine origin. One of the most sig-
nificant of these is the

MAN-WARD PROGRESS OF OUR PLANET.

In the development of the earth there has been a
progress toward humanity from the start, till he appeared
of whom the mute prophets of all ages have borne
witness.

Many years ago I visited a factory for making cloth,
in Woonsocket, R.I. I first went into the sorting-room,
where the raw material was brought, and separated into
heaps, of various degrees of fineness, for the work
needed to be done. From this to where the wool was
washed, and laid in heaps, as pure as the drifted snow. I
followed it to the dyeing-room, where various colors were
given to it, according to the uses to which it was to be
applied. I saw it carded, spun, woven, and finished ; and

OR, THE ORIGIN- OF MAN. 117

in the ultimate product, cloth, I saw that for which the
various processes throughout had been employed. For
this the nimble fingers of the sorters, for this the dye-tubs
steaming hot, the whirring wheels, the long-drawn threads,
and the clattering looms in which they interlocked.
Every movement of every hand and eye, the step of every
foot, the motion of every wheel, contributed to the result.
From the giant water-wheel that revolved in the darkness
to the flying bobbin, from the broad connecting belt to
the tiniest thread that joined in the mazy dance and
linked hands with its dancing neighbors, one spirit ani-
mated the whole, and the one end, cloth, was kept in
sight continually.

As geology enables me to look at the earth, I see it to
be a great factory for making men out of granite. There
is quite a difference, however, between this factory and
that at Woonsocket. That was presided over by an out-
side intelligence, and power that planned and kept it in
motion. When the water-wheel broke, they repaired it ;
when a belt snapped, they joined it ; when a cog broke,
they replaced it. During every minute, everywhere in
that factory, outside intelligence and power were brought
to bear, or the making of cloth would have instantly
ceased. Not so with this factory : its presiding power
resides within. Imagine a factory that could mend its
belts, make new wheels, and, if need be, new spinning-
frames and new looms, by its own inherent power, and
then you imagine a factory that resembles our planet.

Ii8 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Sweep out of existence all the men in the world except
the most brutal Bushmen of Africa, with their protruding
lower jaws, their retreating foreheads and ape-like faces,
and in time from them might spring physical symmetry
and high mental endowment, Apollos and Venuses, Ho-
mers and Shakspeares. We beheve this because there
was a time, when, where the highest types of men are
to-day, men inferior to the lowest Australians existed.
From them have come the best living specimens of our
race ; and we have every reason to believe that by the
operation of the same power a similar result would be
produced.

The poet often sees farther and deeper than the man
of science, who frequently strains his physical eyes in
looking, so that his spiritual eyes are blind. Walt Whit-
man is right when he says : —

"Afar down I see the huge first nothing;
I know I was even there.

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
Long I was hugged close, — long and long.
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me ;
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boat-
men.
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings ;
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 119

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long, slow strata were piled to rest it on.

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited

it with care.
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight

me;
Now I stand on this spot with my soul."

Look down on the hell our earth once was. Here are
mounting flames that leap and sink and roll, as they are
swept by hurricane blasts over the shoreless, fiery sea.
Rivers of glowing metal are flowing over the sun-like
surface, amber, blue, and red, so bright that they dazzle
our eyes. Where is the promise of man in all this?
Little do these fiery tides look like the crimson currents
that are to flow through his veins ; or the ruddy banks
that bound them like the flesh that shall enshrine him ;
or the scorching breath like the air that shall pass peace-
fully through his lips, and feed his lungs. Yet here, in
this fiery hell, is the spirit that shall develop the world
into an earthly paradise, and produce man, and make
him its worthy lord.

Rolling with those fiery waves, leaping with those
ruddy flames, and flowing with that ardent breath, are all
the forests of all ages, the birds that are to sing in their
boughs, the insects that shall feed upon their leaves, the

120 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

beasts that shall browse upon their branches or crop the
herbage beneath them.

And in this boundless furnace, and the smoky atmos-
phere that surrounds it, lies all of which man is to be
composed. Here is that which shall make his bones,
and the flesh that shall clothe them, the blood that shall
permeate it, and the nerves that are to bind it into a sen-
tient whole ; the eyes that shall drink in light from distant
suns, the brains of the world's thinkers, and all that shall
evolve from them ; above all, the tendency that shall
cause matter to move through countless aeons on the
broad highway to man ; and thus you and I were
there. The world was pregnant with man ; and the geo-
logic formations present to us, in their fossils, so many
steps of the gestative process by which he was brought
forth.

Millions of years pass away, and we look again. How
changed ! The fiery sea is gone, the flames are dead,
the metals have sunk to their cavern homes ; and here is
rock, heated rock, dull red in places, bare, black, deso-
late, craggy. Thousands of rimmed craters scar the
earth's face \ and we shudder as we look at the lifeless
wilderness, that seems doomed to sterility forever.

There is little promise here of man, yet the world is
one step nearer. Fire and frost are the great antagonists
of life, and man's empire lies between them. Fire has
been subdued. In this black crust we see the operation

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 121

of cohesion; and within it lurks silex, that shall enter
into the composition of his teeth, and lime and phos-
phorus that shall help to make his bones. The age of
minerals was necessary to collect the materials to build
man's wonderful fabric, as well as lay the foundation on
which it should stand.

A few million years more pass away, and we look
again through the geologic telescope. Here is water
boiling hot, and steam arising in dense clouds ; lakes
rolling about on obsidian plains, like drops of water on
a hot stove, till they are dissipated into vapor. Spouting
geysers send up immense columns of water and steam,
and others intermittingly discharge fountains of black
mud. Yonder are islands rising and sinking, like bub-
bles on the waves, obedient to the disturbing forces
beneath them ; volcanoes bellow, and earthquakes con-
stantly shake the rising ground.

" But I see nothing like man, nor even life," says the
on-looker : " it is as impossible here as in a boiling cal-
dron." Very true, but you must be patient : the gods
need time as truly as the men. We are a step nearer :
here is water, that important element in the construction
of his body. This will help to form the blood that shall
course through his veins, and carry to every part the
material of which his frame shall be built. Distilled on
the earth, it shall cool the heat of the burning day, and
make those plants grow that shall constitute his food.

122 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

These islands are the starting-points of continents, on
which he sliall hve, and without them he could not be.
Examine those rocks, and you will find quartz and mica,
felspar and hornblende, and beautiful crystals of these
and other materials lining the sides of crevices. A
manifestation of life is here ! Only mineral life, it is
true, but life that causes atoms to collect and cohere in
regular geometrical forms. In them we see the symme-
try that will characterize the future man, and the order
and beauty that will appear in his fabric.

Let us look again. The Cambrian age dawns, and
vegetable and animal life are here. What a step is this !
Here is life that takes up foreign matter, and yet forms
an individual in which destruction and construction will
go on together to make it perfect. The first story of
humanity is built : all before this only prepared the
ground, and laid the foundation. Story after story will
now be constructed, as the ages go, till man at last is
placed, the top-stone.

Peering into the water of a sheltered bay, calm as a
baby's sleep, we behold the early embodiments of life.
Here are masses of jelly that cover in spots the bottom
of the ocean, formed of the bodies of united proto-
zoans, that secrete lime and build cells, communicating
with each other, till calcareous reefs are formed, that
pave the bottom of the sea. Here, too, are fan-like
forms, rooted like plants, their beautiful branches out-
spread, all covered with buds, and every bud an animal.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 23

Changes take place now with greater rapidity. Life
has obtained foothold, and moves on with giant strides
to its goal, humanity. It is the Silurian time : fucoids
hair-like, string-like, ribbon-like, make a dense mat on
the rough rocks ; shells innumerable strew the sandy
shore, and the tenants of others are crawling over the sea-
bottom. Let us examine one of these. It is a gaster-
opodous mollusk, — a sea-snail. What an advance is this
upon all previous forms that we have seen ! Here is
what we may call a head, furnished with eyes ; a mouth,
for the reception of food, and tiny teeth. Within the
mouth is a tongue, and from it a stomach and intestinal
canal, that traverses the body with varying convolutions.
A heart, though with only two cavities, forces blood into
the arteries, which branch to all parts of the body ; and a
large liver assists the gills, by which the blood is purified,
and fitted for the uses of the body. There is a nervous
swelling in the head, that we may almost call a brain ;
nerves ramifying through every part of the body ; and a
pair of auditory organs, by which it hears, perchance,
the calls of its snaily neighbors, hid among the branches
of the sea-weed upon which it feeds. It is only a snail,
it is true : but how much of man there is even here ; and,
among the innumerable variations that shall take place
among the living beings that shall inhabit the earth, life
will never sink below the step she has now taken. Many
will branch to the right, and others to the left ; but the

124 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

main trunk rises continually, whose branches shall bear
man as their fruit.

With this advance has been an equal advance in all
that is favorable to still higher beings. The air is purer ;
poison has been eliminated from it, condensed, and
buried at the bottom of the sea ; the water is less pol-
luted with foreign material ; the islands have been en-
larged j mountains raise their heads upon them, green to
their cloud-capped summits, for vegetable life has seized
upon the land, and lowly plants adorn the universal

earth.

What are these that go flashing through the waters,
with glittering scales of bone ? These are fishes, small,
it is true, but what a step man-ward they indicate ! Here
is man's backbone ; for, though cartilaginous, it performs
the same office, as it occupies the same place, as that
jointed, bony structure in man. Within it is the great
spinal nerve ; and at the head of it the brain, lodged in a
bony box to hold and protect it, whose parts have the
same names as those in the skull of man. Here are
head, face, an eye on each side, mouth beneath, teeth,
stomach, liver, gall, swim- bladder, prophesying of lungs,
and four fins with little bones within, showing us where
man's finger-bones shall eventually grow. Why, it is a
litde, scaly water-man, almost as near to him as a life in
the water will permit. It can propel itself by its limbs,
see and hear, hope and fear, love and hate ; and more

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 125

than the foundation of both man's physical and mental
nature was laid when the first fishes appeared.

Do not imagine, however, that the road to man was a
highway smooth and plain, along which life moved to
him without a jolt. The development of life was in
some respects like the growth of a tree ; but there were
fearful storms, breaking off innumerable branches, sweep-
ing off leaves and blossoms, but leaving a trunk that sent
out new and stronger branches, for the urgent spirit was
within, that carried it on to greener leaves and fairer
blossoms. There were times when volcanic outbursts
destroyed living beings over wide areas, as the prairie
fires sweep off the grass ; but as the prairie renews its
beauty after the fire, so the world has renewed itself a
miUion times.

Years pass, as drops down a flowing river, and we are
in the Devonian age. Taller mountains pierce the sky,
larger islands dot the sea, and broader rivers pour their
turbid streams into the ocean. In the swamps are slen-
der plants with curly tops, tall reeds also, with long, flat,
fleshy leaves ; and calamites, like giant horse-tails, wave
their tapering tops. Trees of considerable size adorn
the distant mountains, while tree-ferns abound on the
lower grounds. Flowers gem the ground and make fra-
grant the air, dragon-flies flit around the rivers, and a
cricket-like chirp enlivens the hitherto silent woods. We
sail over the sea^ and mark in its blue depths the vari-

126 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

oiisly colored and variously shaped polyps, forming
branching trees and reefs that extend for miles, whose
honeycomb-like cells are filled with the oil that they
have secreted and stored, light and fuel for the coming
ages. Myriads of fishes are here, some, like the Ptet-
ichthys Milleri, no longer than a man's finger, and others
in increasing size to the dinichthys, or terrible fish, from
twenty-five to thirty feet in length. This is the age of
fishes, when the vertebrate foundation was broadened
and deepened, on which the palace of humanity was to
be reared. Fishes were then the kings of the world :
they ruled for ages : and from this royal family, along
many independent lines, life descended and ascended to
man.

Following the Devonian age came the carboniferous,
the great coal-forming period in the world's history.
Now continental areas appear above the contending
waves, and immense swamps are filled with luxuriant
vegetation, club-mosses, tree-ferns, and calamites every-
where. Young trees, like large cabbages, are springing
out of the spongy ground, and unrolling their ferny
fronds. What a tangled wilderness is this I we push
and climb and wade through its depths, trunks above
trunks, trunks across trunks, branches interlocking, and
almost shutting out the light of day. We are now on
the margin of a lake, and notice the bony-plated fishes
that swarm in the waters ; we walk along the beach, and

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

127

are as startled as Robinson Crusoe was, when he discov-
ered the tracks of a man on what he had supposed was
a desolate island ; for here is a five-digited track, look-
ing as if stamped by some rude little hand. It is the
track of some animal whose fore-feet are small and four-
toed, and its hind-feet much larger and five-toed. (Fig.
38.) Vertebrate life has advanced from water to land,
a grand stage nearer to
man. As we advance we
discover frog-like amphib-
ians, with enormous heads,
and large conical teeth ;
snake-like amphibians,
that wriggle through the
woods, and even climb the
trees ; triangular - headed
amphibians, with sharp
teeth, Hving principally in
the water, as their exterior
gills indicate, feeding on

the fishes that their great- Fig. 38.- Slnb of Sandstone with Amphibi-

er intelligence enables an Footprints, from the Coal-Measures
^ of Pennsylvania, X lo.

them to catch. Here

are animals entirely destitute of gills, that breathe the
vital air by lungs alone. They have emerged from the
watery grave in which the highest forms of life have been
buried for vast ages, and have been at last resurrected

128 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

to a new life. On to manhood now, with a firm step,
march the Hving hosts.

Thousands of years again pass, as cloud-shadows over
the prairies, and it is the age of reptiles, the heart of the
Jurassic period. Great cycads overshadow the land, the
enormous leaves of some drooping from their lofty
crowns to the very ground. Pines clothe loftier moun-
tains than the world has ever before seen, and ferns of
many species beautify the woods, that grow wherever
land exists, the earth around.

Basking on the rocks are scaly monsters ; floating on
the surface of the sea and diving in its waters are saurians
as large as whales, whose combats redden the ocean with
their blood ; reptiles on bat-like wings are in the air, fly-
ing dragons, relentless marauders. Reptiles are now the
masters ; in their turn, kings of the world ; but prepara-
tions are making for their overthrow. Do you see that
pine which has fallen across the mountain-torrent? upon
its trunk is a small mammal, no larger than a squirrel ; but
it marks the introduction of a new race, that shall cause
all others to sink into insignificance. It is a marsupial,
and of inferior organization : but its brain is the largest
that has appeared, in proportion to the size of the animal ;
its offspring are for a time nourished in the womb and
cherished at the breast ; and life has passed on another
stage nearer to man.

Now it is the tertiary age, the age of mammals. Enor-

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 139

mous elephants wander through forests that can hardly
be distinguished from those of our warm temperate re-
gions to-day. Lions and tigers lurk in the thickets, horse-
like animals feed in the natural meadows, on whose
skirts great wolves are watching them. Tapiroid animals
are bathing in the water, and rhinoceroses are wallowing,
like enormous hogs, in the pools by the river's side. The
mountains are higher than we have before seen them, and
snow for the first time appears on their tops. We can
distinguish the condnents, as we know them to-day,
though considerable change has taken place in their
shape. The scene is so familiar, we look for man, but
look in vain. Aha ! here are his long-armed, hairy repre-
sentatives, the apes, swinging from bough to bough, and
tree to tree, and feeding upon the wild figs that grow
luxuriantly on the trees that skirt the wood. Here are
man's eyes and nose and mouth, his teeth and stomach,
his bony skeleton, in short, in every particular ; his heart,
his brain, his anger and love, his hate and revenge, his
hope and fear, his gluttony and selfishness. The old ape
scolds and threatens ; the young apes chatter, and at his
approach they run. The beast is playing man.

The beasts, however, advanced in brain-capacity during
the tertiary period, that we can only consider millions of
years in length. The early mammals of the eocene are
noted for the smallness of their brains. Look at the
skull and brain-cavity of the dinoceras (Fig. 39), a mam-

130

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Fig. 39. — Dinoceras, Skull and Brain, X 16.

(After Marsh.)

mal whose remains were found in the eocene beds of
Wyoming by Marsh. The brain had only one-eighth the

capacity of that of a
rhinoceros of the
same size. The earh-
est monkeys had the
smallest and smooth-
est brains of all the
monkeys. The oldest
horses of the tertiary
are those having the smallest brains, and brain-power
increases with every geologic step as we advance.

At last appears the world's master, — he for whom all
forces have labored for a million ages. Stunted, but
brawny, hairy, nearly erect, dumb, naked, with enormous
eyebrows, bushy hair that hangs down in snaky locks, his
forehead "villanously low:" he wanders through the
forest, stick in hand, with which he strikes the loose bark
of trees, and appropriates the fat white worms as they
drop at his feet. Now he is up a hundred feet high,
shaking the branches ; and his laugh is echoed from the
rocks a mile away, as the fruit rains upon the ground.
He is down and running, as fleet as a deer, to a river's
bank : we miss him, it is but for a moment ; we turn a
bend of the stream, and here is a cave, and men, women,
and children, to whom he gesticulates ; and out a party
sallies under his leadership, and make their breakfast on

OA', THE ORIGIN OF MAN. \x\

the fruit which he has found. But fruit is not their only
food. We see on the floor of the cave the bones of
bears and wild hogs, of elephants and horses, caught by
running them into bogs. Can it be ? It is, a man's skull :
why, these are cannibals ! Too true : such was man
about the close of the tertiary time. But man, a canni-
bal even, is far in advance of all that preceded him :
give him time, and, by the aid of that spirit that bore
him, he will outgrow cannibalism and even war. Out of
such as these have come Greece and Rome, Egypt and
Judaea, Moses and Jesus, Shakspeare and Goethe, Par-
ker and Garrison, — only, however, in consequence of
that continuous tendency, which, infinitely more than all
else, has made us what we are.

The Darwinian theory gives us no clew to the cause
of this progress. Darwin acknowledges that we are igno-
rant of the cause of variation,^ though he subsequently
refers to "surrounding circumstances" as the cause.
Huxley says that " every variation depends in some sense
upon external conditions, seeing that every thing has a
cause of its own ; " - and he refers to " temperature, food,
warmth, and moisture," as among these external condi-
tions ; they are the only ones he mentions, and he evi-
dently regards them as the most important. Warmth is
only that state of temperature that is a little higher than
the heat of our own bodies ; consecjuently we have as

1 Origin of Species, p. 120. - Ibid., p. S9

132 JS DARWIN RIGHT?

the principal external conditions that produce variation,
according to Huxley, temperature, food, and moisture.
Had there been no variation, there could have been no
advancement, there would have been no chance for the
operation of natural selection. We have then presented
by Huxley, as the grand causes for the production of fish,
bird, mammal, and man, temperature, moisture, and food.
These, then, are the gods, but how utterly impotent are
they ! What is there in warmth, water, and food to
advance a protozoan to a radiate, a worm to a fish, and
an ape to a man ? A frost in the spring-time stops the
growth of the cucumber-plants, and the heat of a hotbed
with water and food causes them to grow in the heart of
winter ; but what could these do in the formation of plant
or leaf, if the life-bearing seed was not present ? Food
can make a hog fat, with suitable temperature and a
proper proportion of water ; but how long must the farmer
feed it before it shall take wings, and change its sty for
the eagle's eyry? Changes as great as that have taken
place during the geologic epochs ; and to attribute them
to food, warmth, and water, may be considered philoso-
phical, but is certainly not reasonable.

Add the influence of natural selection to the effect
produced by warmth, food, and moisture, and how far can
we then advance ? Natural selection preserves a varia-
tion that is beneficial to the individual, because those
that do not possess it, in the struggle for life are over-

OK, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 133

come, and die. If variation without tendency could have
made a protozoan like a radiate, what advantage would it
have been? where the radiata can live, so can the proto-
zoa ; and they thrive well at the bottom of the deep seas,
where radiates are almost entirely wanting. What, then,
should have produced the progressive step from protozoa
to radiata? What beneht could it have been to a radiate
to become a worm, or a worm to be transformed into a
fish? Life might just as well have continued in these
lower forms as long as the planet could produce them.
Why, then, this steady, continuous advance through the
ages to man ? Start an ant from Boston to the Mosque
of Omar in Jerusalem, and the chances would be greater
of its arriving there than of life arriving at man, from its
first organic start in the Laurentian or pre-Laurentian
time, without a guide.

THE RACE DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMALS.

As the individual development of animals in the womb
of the parent is an evidence of the natural origin of spe-
cies, so the race development of animals in the womb of
time is an evidence of their spiritual origin. Take the
horse : the earliest horse-like animal known to us is
called by Professor Marsh the eohippus (the dawn-horse).
This was certainty a million of years before the appear-
ance of the true horse, and in all probability two or
three millions. Professor Marsh says, " In the structure

134 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

of the feet and in the teeth, the eohippus indicates un-
mistakably that the direct ancestral line to the modern
horse has already separated from the other perissodac-
tyles." ^ As early as this, then, the ancestors of the horse
had separated from the other odd- toed, hoofed quadru-
peds, and started for the goal, — the modern horse ; and
during all the subsequent ages they never left the track,
though there were many stragglers that turned to the
right and left, and were lost.

The day follows the dawn because the sun is below
the horizon and is rising ; and the horse followed the
dawn-horse because the spiritual ideal of the horse was
below the geological horizon, and only time and favorable
conditions were needed for its perfect embodiment.

As we advance toward the present time, we find the
orohippiis, which is a little larger than the eohippus, and
shows a greater resemblance to the modern horse. The
mesohippus, which follows, in the lower miocene, is about
as large as a sheep, and, as Professor Marsh says, is " one
stage nearer the horse." In the upper miocene comes
?niohippus, which " continues the line." In the lower
pliocene comes protohippus, still more like a horse ; and
in the upper pliocene the pliohippiis (more horse), the
most horse-like of all the equine ancestry ; and following
this comes the true horse : every step is a step horseward.
The man who saw an artist making a statue could not be

* Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate Life in America, p. 31.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 135

more certain that he was following an ideal, as the block
became more and more like a man, than we can be that
Nature was following an ideal, as she brought into exist-
ence these successively more and more horse-hke forms,
till the animal appeared as he is known to us to-day.
What caused these forms to approach nearer and nearer
to the horse in a direct line for millions of years ? To
answer, " struggle for life," " survival of the fittest,"
"natural selection," " moisture, food, and warmth," and
ask us to accept these as sufficient to account for it, is to
make a demand on our credulity such as no defender of
dogmatic theology ever surpassed. There never was a
keener struggle for life among inferior animals than there
has been since man appeared on the planet, — a struggle
so keen that in it many have gone down, and others are
rapidly approaching extinction ; yet we not only fail to
see a new species developed as a consequejice of this
struggle, but we do not even see a step taken in that
direction.

Swine, camels, deer, oxen, elephants, and other mam-
mals were preceded during the tertiary period by many
species of animals allied to them, and approaching nearer
at every step to the animals at present known by those
names. There were numerous offshoots, such as varia-
tion, modification, and natural selection might produce ;
but these died out, as the lower branches of a tree so
frequently die, the main stem continuing toward the

136 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

perfect type. Undirected variation, even when aided by
natural selection, offers no sufficient explanation of these
facts. As far as we can see, the orohippus was just as
well adapted to its surroundings as the horse, and would
have subsisted just as well in our meadows as the horse,
thoudi it would have been much less serviceable to man.

ORG.^NIC DISTRIBUTION.

Another pointer which indicates man's spiritual origin,
as well as the spiritual origin of other organic beings, is
seen in the geographical and geological distribution of
plants and animals. By this I mean the existence of
allied plants and animals in such geographical and geo-
logical positions, that it seems evident they never could
have been the descendants of the same progenitors.
Darwin himself generously furnishes us with facts that
cannot, I think, be explained on the principle that natural
selection has been the most potent agent in the produc-
tion of new species. Between forty and fifty of the
flowering plants of Terra del Fuego, " forming no incon-
siderable part of its scanty flora, are common to Europe,
enormously remote as these two points are ; and there
are many closely allied species." ^ In addition to these
almost all the lichens, forty-eight mosses, and many other
cryptogamous plants, are identical with species existing in
Great Britain. But how could these, fitted for a climate

' Origin of Species, p. 326.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 137

like that of the southernmost point of South America,
migrate from Europe, or those of Europ~e migrate from
Terra del Fuego, a distance of more than seven thousand
miles, across a broad ocean and the heated tropics ? At
the Cape of Good Hope, European species are found,
which have not been discovered in the intertropical parts
of Africa. What is still more remarkable, the plants,
fishes, and crabs of New Zealand resemble those of
Europe. Twenty-five species of sea-weeds are common
to New Zealand and to Europe, that are not found in the
tropical seas that lie between them.^ Several European
plants are found on the southern mountains of Australia,
and some on the lowlands. Had the European species
wandered from Australia, or the Australian species from
Europe, or had both wandered from some intermediate
locahty, it does not seem possible that they could have
been subjected to such a difference of temperature, as
they necessarily must, for such a long period of time,
without specific change. Should our botanists wander
over the temperate regions of Venus, is it not probable
that they would find mosses and grasses, see fish in its
waters, and algae along the sea-washed shores ? If Dar-
winians, they would then speculate upon the possibility
of meteorites from the earth having dropped the neces-
sary seeds upon the planet that gave rise to the allied
forms. Two genera of salmons " from South America,

* Origin of Species, p. 327.

138 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

New Zealand, and Australia, are analogous to European
salmons." ' To account for such facts, the glacial period
is supposed to have exerted a cooling influence over the
whole globe, so that during its continuance plants may-
have been able to migrate over what are now intervening
hot spaces; but the more we know of the glacial period,
the more restricted are we led to regard the influence
of the cold during the time, and any refrigeration of
the climate of the tropics sufficient to allow of the migra-
tion of north temperate plants across them would have
been sufficient to destroy all tropical vegetation.

The mariner finds on the rocks of the South Shetland
Islands, lying to the south of Cape Horn, patches of
grass, mosses, and lichens, closely resembling those that
he sees on the rocks of Iceland, as far north of the equa-
tor as that is south. Are these descended from the same
progenitors ? or are they not independent developments
from spontaneously generated microscopic organisms,
under the influence of that tendency toward certain defi-
nite forms which operates in the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, as all acknowledge that it does in the mineral
kingdom ?

Great breadth of separation, either in time or space,
is generally represented by great organic differences, the
species of different geologic formations and of different
continents being but seldom alike ; yet the resemblances

J Mivart's Genesis of Species, p. 163,

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 139

that are found between the animals and plants of the
various geologic periods, and on widely separated portions
of our planet, point to some other cause than community
of descent for their explanation.

In the slaty rocks at Braintree near Boston, which are
sometimes called Cambrian and sometimes primordial,
for they are older than the Potsdam sandstone, we find
a large trilobite, Paradoxides Harlani. In Bohemia,
Austria, in beds of about the same age, we find also a
large trilobite very similar to it, Paradoxides Bohemiciis.
The places where they lived were separated by many
thousand miles, and the progenitors of the two species
must have been apart, we may reasonably suppose, for
ages ; yet the variation is exceedingly slight.

At Cincinnati in Ohio ; Richmond, Ind. ; Frankfort,
Ky. ; Trenton, N.Y. ; and Mineral Point, Wis., — we find
a trilobite, Calymene sejiaria. A quite similar trilobite is
found at Dudley, England, and at Gothland in Sweden.
They are found at the same, or about the same, geo-
logical horizon in both countries ; and although the Euro-
pean one is called by a different name, Calymene Blujn-
e?ibachii, the only difference is that a portion of the sur-
face of the latter is somewhat rougher than that of the
other.

The most common molluscous fossils in the Potsdam
sandstone of this country, from Wisconsin to New York,
are species of the lingula and the obolus. In beds of

140 IS DARWIN- RIGHT?

the same age in England and Bohemia, it is equally true.
We find in the United States accompanying them a pter-
opod of the genus Theca ; and we find this to be the
case, both in England and Bohemia.

When trilobites were abundant in the ocean that cov-
ered New York and Ohio, they were equally abundant in
the seas whose billows rolled over Utah, England, and
Europe generally ; and when they died out in one part
of the globe, they died out nevermore to re-appear in all
portions of our planet. The European chain-coral of
the Upper Silurian is identical with that which character-
izes the Niagara group in this country, from the arctic
regions to the Southern States.

The resemblance between some of the lower forms of
life, that are widely separated in time, is not less unfavor-
able to the Darwinian hypothesis. Let any man look at
the shells of the lingtclce, that frequently overspread the
surface of Silurian slabs, and then look at the shells of
modem iingiilce, and at first sight he could hardly dis-
tinguish one from the other. Yet they are probably
separated by fifty million years. If the HngulcB of to-day
are the descendants of the Lower Silurian lingtdce, what
should have preserved them almost unchanged during
the multitudinous mutations to which every part of the
ocean must have been subjected?

Compare the sea-snails of the Silurian, such as belong
to the genera Murchisofiia, Cyclonema, and Pleurotoma-

OR, THE ORIGIN- OF MAN. 141

ria, with the sea-snails on our present coasts, and the
resemblance is so great, that ordinary observers call
them at once by the same names. The gasteropods
in Fig. 40 do not belong to the same genera, nor even
the same families ; yet the resemblance in the shell-cov-
ering is very great. Compare the ferns of the coal

Fig. 40. — Ancient and Modern Gasteropods, natural size. i. Littorina litorea,
a gasteropod found on the coast of New England; 2. Cyclonema bilix, a fossil
gasteropod, from the Cincinnati group of the Lower Silurian; 3. Chlorostoma
fimbrale, found on the Pacific coast. (Original.)

measures with our modern ferns, and even botanists find
it difficult to distinguish some of them from their mod-
ern representatives. Are the snails of to-day the direct
descendants of the marine snails of forty million years
ago ? Is it not much more probable that they are lower
branches of the tree of life, millions of which have
sprouted, multitudes died, but of which there are still
some survivors?

If all, or nearly all, the differences that have existed
and do exist between organic beings are the result of
minute, undirected variations, each of which was of ben-

142 /S DA /CIV/ A' RIGHT?

efit to its possessor, what incessant variation must have
taken place to produce the new species that appear with
every new geological group ! Not only must there have
been the variations that were useful to the individual,
and were in consequence preserved, but the many thou-
sand times greater number that were not useful, and
therefore, according to the Darwinian theory, could not
have been preserved ; in addition to these, the varia-
tions that were useful, and were not perpetuated, in con-
sequence of that persistency of type that characterizes
all species of organic beings. With such incessant vari-
ation as this theory demands, how shall we account for
the fact that the fossiliferous rocks distributed over the
globe can generally be distinguished by a geologist at a
glance, in consequence of the great resemblance be-
tween the fossils contained in them? This is not only
true of the great formations, but it is also true of most
of the groups of rocks into which they are divided. All
over the planet, the fossils found in the rocks bear a
close resemblance to those in the same geological hori-
zon.

The facts seem to indicate that life has developed
from distinct organic beginnings along parallel lines, as
rapidly as the improved conditions of the planet per-
mitted. As the tadpole remains a tadpole, unless there
is a sufficient light to give the stimulus necessary to push
it on to the frog stage, the tendency to which lies within

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAiV. 143

it, SO it appears that living beings, within which lay the
tendency to advance to higher forms, have developed
from age to age as rapidly as the surrounding conditions
became sufficiently favorable for a forward step to be
possible. Better conditions have laid the higher steps
of the organic ladder, from one geologic age to another,
enabling hfe to climb to the summit.

In the axolotl of Mexico we see an animal livinjj in a
certain form for hundreds of years, and in all probability
for thousands, perpetuating itself in the same form, yet,
under changed conditions, suddenly transformed into an
animal so entirely different, that a naturalist knowing
nothing about the transformation would regard them not
only as distinct species, but as belonging to different
genera, if not different families. (Fig. 41.)

The axoloti is a fish-like amphibian, ten to fifteen
inches long, of a grayish color, spotted with black. On
each side of the neck there are branching gills, by
means of which it can breathe when in the water ; while
at the same time it possesses lungs, and by their use can
live out of the water. This animal had long been known
to naturalists ; but their surprise was great to learn, that,
after being carried to Paris, some of the young had
become transformed into an entirely different animal.
It is true we see a similar transformation in the case of
the frog ; but the tadpole does not breed, and we have
never regarded it as other than an immature stage of the

144

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

frog. It has been found by repeated experiments, that
when the young of the axolotl are removed from the
water at a certain stage, and kept as much as possible in
tlie air, they are transformed into amblystomas, and the
following are a few of the changes in structure which
result : —

Fig. 41. — The Axolotl as it is found in Mexico. The Amblystoma into which

it is sometimes transformed.

1. The gills disappear, and the clefts of the gills close
up.

2. The crest on the back disappears.

3. The rudder-like tail changes to a tail that is nearly
round, like a salamander's.

4. The ground color of the skin is changed from gray-
ish black to a shining, greenish-black, on which yellow-
ish-white patches are irregularly distributed.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 145

5. The eyes become prominent, and the pupils small;
and eyelids are formed which can close the eye com-
pletely, while in the axolotl the eye cannot be closed.

6. The toes diminish in size, and lose their skin-like
appendages.

7. The palatal teeth are changed from a position in
which they form an arched band, to one in which they
stand in a diagonal row.

8. In the axolotl there are in the under jaw several
rows of small teeth, which disappear after the metamor-
phosis.

9. The anterior face of each vertebra is less concave
in the amblystoma than in the axolotl.^

For the long period of time during which the axolotl
existed in Mexico, possibly hundreds of thousands of
years, bringing forth beings like itself, there existed
within it the power, when conditions were favorable, to
make a very decided advance to the form of the sala-
mander. Why may there not have been during the past
geologic ages a power residing in various forms of
organic beings, to transform them into nobler forms
of life, when conditions were such as would allow the
transformation to take place ?

1 See Weismann's article, On the Change of the Mexican Axolotl to an
Amblystoma, m the Smithsonian Report for 1877.

146 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

PERSISTENCY OF TYPE.

The persistency of type under the great changes \.<s
which organic beings are and have been subjected is a
pointer whose significance can hardly be over-estimated
in this connection. If there are spiritual ideals, as I
think, which are striving to embody themselves, and
organic beings are the result, it is not surprising that it
should be difficult to turn them aside ; and, even when
they are turned aside, it is not surprising to learn that
they readily revert to what may be nearer the spiritual
type : but, if all beings are the result of undirected varia-
tion and natural selection, the great stability of organic
forms is one of the most wonderful facts in nature. Man
is found on all continents, and, from the earliest historical
times, has inhabited them and all large islands : he wan-
ders over the burning sand of the tropics, and slides
over the icy snow of the Frigid Zone ; he flourishes at
the sea-level, and fourteen thousand feet above it ; he is
as frugivorous as the ape, as carnivorous as the lion, as
piscivorous as the seal, and as omnivorous as the hog ;
yet everywhere, and under all circumstances, he always
retains the type of his race. We find him black and
brown, yellow and white, tall and short, fat and lean,
bearded and beardless, savage and civilized, but still
human. If there was no innate tendency in nature to
produce man, and if he is not the fruit of the tree of life.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 147

beyond which it cannot go, why should this be ? Why
not, during all this time, some indications in him of a
new order of beings? If all he possesses is merely the
product of variation that was beneficial to the individual,
apart from tendency leading that variation in any particu-
lar direction, why not new organs appearing in man now,
or during the past, say, two hundred and fifty thousand
years? Why should variation and natural selection cease
to operate now ? A pair of eyes at the back of the head
would be very useful, especially to a savage ; for, while
transfixing his enemy with a spear in front, he would be
able to see what his other enemies were doing behind
him. An individual thus endowed, in the struggle for
life, would be almost certain to survive, and transmit his
back-head optics to his fortunate descendants. Another
pair of arms to correspond with them would be of im-
mense service. He could then wrestle with two men at
once, gather fruit before and behind, and have a much
greater chance to survive. Why not, among the infinite
number of variations that must be produced, if Darwinism
be true, buds behind the shoulders of some babies, in
the place w^here arms ought to grow ? But we hear of
nothing of this kind, and we see no variations that would
lead us to think that any such thing could be possible.
Astronomers scanning the heavens sorely need a tele-
scopic eye, that would enable them to see as only the
most expensive instruments now enable them. An indi-

148 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

vidual endowed with an extra pair of eye-lenses might be
able to see Jupiter's moons and Neptune's sateUites with
ease, without instrumental assistance. Such a man would
receive a larger salary, he could therefore afford to marry,
and this valuable peculiarity would thus be likely to
descend to his telescopic posterity. But we find no tele-
scopic eye-sprouts, no telephonic ear indications. The
tree never advances beyond its fruit, and I believe the
life-tree of our planet fruited when man appeared.

Darwin's view of the origination of new varieties, which
are to him incipient species, is thus presented by him :
" If organic beings in a state of nature vary even in a
slight degree, owing to changes in the surrounding condi-
tions, of which we have abundant geological evidence, or
from any other cause ; if, in the long course of ages, in-
heritable variations ever arise in any way advantageous to
any being under its excessively complex and changing
relations of life, — and it would be a strange fact if bene-
ficial variations did never arise, seeing how many have
arisen, which man has taken advantage of for his own
profit or pleasure, — if, then, these contingencies ever
occur, and I do not see how the probability of their
occurrence can be doubted, then the severe and often-
recurrent struggle for existence will determine that those
variations, however slight, which are favorable, shall be
preserved or selected, and those which are unfavorable
shall be destroyed." ^ He adds on the next page, "Selec-

^ Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p 16.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 149

tion does nothing without variabihty, and this depends in
some manner on the action of the surrounding circum-
stances on the organism." There is, according to this,
no internal direction whatever ; and variation, under the
influence of external circumstances, blindly changes every
part of the structure of every animal till it produces an
improvement that natural selection can preserve.

If all the forms of life now on the planet have been
thus produced by slight changes from pre-existent forms
preserved by natural selection, the process by which it
was accomplished, we may reasonably suppose, is still
going on ; and, among the millions of living beings that
now inhabit the globe, we ought to be able to see some
on the way to new and entirely different forms, for we
cannot conceive that the possible forms which variation
and natural selection can produce are exhausted. Among
reptiles, why not the first indications, at least, of a trans-
formation of the fore-feet to wings, and the appearance of
feathers? Why not some indications of hands to take
the place of the hoofed feet of horses and cattle ? It is
true that natural selection might in time destroy them,
for hands would not be as useful to horses as feet ; but
variation, being blind, can have no idea that hands are
not useful to a horse. It is natural selection that decides
whether the statues made by the blmd sculptor. Varia-
tion, shall stand in the temple of life, or be ground to
powder ; and it is only, according to Darwin, by variation

i^o

7S DARWIN RIGHT?

blindly trying millions of times, and eventually hitting
something worthy of preservation by natural selection,
that hands, eyes, ears, and all other organs have been
produced. We should find a proboscis or something
quite as remarkable, for which we have no name, starting
on the heads or tails of our canines ; for how can variation

Fig. 42. — Mastiff of the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Found in the ruins of Baby-
lon. (After Layard.)

know that a dog does not need a trunk, and how can it
distinguish the head from the tail? Claws might begin
to appear on the feet of the sheep, for how should varia-
tion know that they do not care to catch mice ?

Dogs vary greatly : from the lap-dog to the New-
foundland is a wide space ; but no one considers either

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

151

to be over the line of our familiar canis, and the vari-
ations of five thousand years have failed to take a single
dog beyond the boundary. A difference as great as that
between a dog and a wolf, or a fox, has not been known
to be produced in that time. (Figs. 42 and 43.)

J. P. Leslie, in his work entitled " Man's Origin and
Destiny," in reference to this s;iys, "On the oldest mon-
uments of the Pha-
raohs, the pictures of
different kinds of dogs
are recognized by any
child as the pictures of
the dogs with which he
plays to-day. The pic-
tures of the negro, the
Jew, the Egyptian, the

Scythian, are perfect likenesses of the Nubians, Fellahs,
Jews, and Turks of to-day. There you may see, portrayed
in colors six thousand years old, the same slave-traders,
driving down the same slave-coffles, as in the same val-
ley of the Nile to-day. If all the races of mankind are
variants, by the law of variation, from the form of Noah
or of Adam, then how infinitely remote must have been
the time when Noah or Adam lived ! "

With all the wonderful changes which variation and
human selection have produced in the pigeon, going on,
as they have been, for thousands of years, yet no new

Fig. 43. — The Egyptian Gazelle Dog. About
4,000 years old. (From " The Types of
Mankind.")

152

IS .DAR WIN RIGHT ?

species of bird has been formed : the fan-tails, pouters,
and tumblers are pigeons still. The oak, the beech, the
sassafras, the willow, and the poplar grew in the woods
that clothed the American continent in the cretaceous
time, probably four milhon years ago. (Fig. 44.) Out
of one hundred and ten species of trees found in the
cretaceous beds of Nebraska, at least half of them

Fig. 44. — Sassafras (Araliopsis) mirabile. Lesq. From the Cretaceous Beds of

Kansas. (Original.)

belong to genera now living. The most common leaf
that I found in the miocene beds of Wyoming was the
poplar {Populiis decipiens^ Fig. 45), and the poplar is
the common deciduous tree found in Wyoming to-day.
Some of the same species of trees now growing were
in the old cretaceous forests. Sassafras officinale, the
only species now growing in the United States, is found

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 153

in the cretaceous beds of Dakota. Our beech of the
present time, Fagus polyclada, is found in beds of the
same age.

The herring is one of the most common fishes now
found in the ocean, and a herring {cliipea humilis) is
the most common fossil fish found in the eocene shales
of Wyoming at this time. So like the living herring is
it, that, when my son Sherman saw it for the first time,

Fig. 45. — Populus decipiens. Miocene Beds, Wyoming. (Original.)

he said, "Why, that is a herring." (Fig. 46.) With
variation operating without a guide, and making a
million changes where only one could be preserved,
there should be no such fixity of type as this ; and its
existence is one of the best evidences that unguided
variation and natural selection have done comparatively
little toward the production of the Hving beings which
inhabit our planet.

154

IS DARlVIiV RIGHT?

There is evidently a spiritual influence that permeates,
and a spiritual intelligence that presides over, every
organic being, and rules its destiny. In the tree they lay
the pipes for the nourishing sap, artistically mould the
leaf, paint the blossom, and place a honey-drop at its
base to tempt the insect whose offices are needed at its
marriage ; and they allow it no rest till the ripened fruit
is formed. So has it been with the life-tree that bore

Fig. 46. — Clupea humilis. Eocene Shale. Wyoming. (Original.)

man. Why did he not remain the low-browed, ape-
faced, naked, hairy, raw-flesh-devouring savage that -he
was when he roamed through the woods of Great Brit-
ain and France, before Niagara commenced to cut its
way back from Queenstown? His hairy covering, as
Wallace suggests, was a better protection from the
weather than the naked backs of his descendants ; his
thick skull was just adapted for the warfare that he was,
and is still, compelled in many parts of the \vorld to

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 155

wage with the wild beasts around him; his capacious
chest, and strong-boned, muscular frame well fitted him
for a Hfe in a world where the price of existence is a
ceaseless struggle against opposing forces.

Why did the face of the primitive savage become
smooth? What narrowed the nostril, thinned the lip,
diminished the space from the mouth to the nose, ad-
vanced the eye from its cavernous retreat, and short-
ened the arms? Why did his front brain enlarge, and
his back brain diminish ? Why did greater beauty mark
his face and frame, till the dumb, dirty, ignorant savage
was transformed into the well-formed and philosophic
man? Whence came his moral sense, that led him at
last to sacrifice his own interest to increase the happiness
of his fellows? Whence came that belief in future
existence, that led him to lay by the side of the corpse
the weapons of the chase that he supposed the spirit
might need in another condition of being? Undirected
variation, natural selection, and even sexual selection
added, are utterly inadequate to account for these things.

MULTIPLICrrV OF HUMAN ORIGINS.

The Darwinian, in accounting for man, must not only
account for the Caucasian, but also for the Ethiopian, the
Mongolian, the Malaysian, the American, and other races
of human beings, some of which are only represented
to-day by outlying fragments, We only need to look at

156

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

Fig. 47, the Hottentot Venus, who died but a few years

ago, and whose model is now in the
Garden of Plants in Paris, to see
what an amazing difference at the
present time exists between some of
the races of mankind. The hump
possessed by this female was no un-
natural deformity : many years ago
I saw a female Hottentot that re-
sembled her in this respect, and in
Southern Africa they are not uncom-
mon. Nor do racial differences de-
crease as we go backward in time.
Fig. 48 represents the Chinese his-
torian, Sse-ma-thsian, who was born
B.C. 145.

The Chinaman was no less

Chinese then than now. Fig.

49 is the portrait of Khoung-

fou-tseu (Confucius), who was

born 551 B.C. He differs

considerably from the preced-
ing ; but how distinct his face

is from that of any Caucasian,

Egyptian, and negro! The Fig. 48. - Chinese Historian, Sse-

red Egyptians, three thousand "^^-^^^i^"- ('^f^^"" Pauthier.)
five hundred years ago, were busy as bees in the valley

Fig. 47. — Hottentot Venus.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAxV.

157

of the Nile ; splitting out blocks in the quarries, hewing
them into column and statue, dragging them to their ap-
pointed places, and building palaces for their kings, and
temples for their gods. They were honeycombing the
rocky hills, and rearing stony mountains, — in the shape
of pyramids, — to make homes for their mummied dead ;

their scholars were study-
ing the peoples that sur-
rounded them, and their
artists were busy repre-
senting them. The fol-
1 owing representations
(Figs. 50 to 53) were
found in the tomb of
Seti-Menephtha I., at
Thebes, painted red, yel-
low, black, and white.^
The first figure, red,
represents the Egyptian,
slightly modified in the
Fellah of modern Egypt.
The next, yellow, represents the yellow people with which
the Egyptians were acquainted ; the best knowm to them
would be the Arabians and Chaldeans, more highly
colored at that time than the present Arabs and dwellers
in the valley of the Euphrates. The next figure is as

1 Types of Mankind, p. 85.

Fig. 49. — Confucius, the Chinese Sage.
(After Pauthier.)

153

IS DAKIV/N RIGHT?

black and as distinctively negroid as the last is white and
distinctively Caucasian. Figure 54 is an Egyptian repre-
sentation of a negress, made nearly three thousand three
hundred years ago ; and in the " Types of Mankind,"
from which I take it, we have the following description

Figs. 50, 51. — Ancient Eg^'ptian representation of the races of mankind, about
3,400 years ago. The left-hand figure is red, representing the Egyptian. The
right-hand figure is yellow, representing the Shemites or Chaldeans. (After
Champollion.)

of a negress, by Virgil, written early in the second cen-
tury : " In the mean while he calls Cybele. She was his
only (house) keeper ; African by race, her whole face
attesting her father-land ; with crisped hair, swelling lip,
and blackish complexion ; broad in chest, with pendent
dugs (and) very contracted paunch ; her spindle shanks

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

159

(contrasted with her) enormous feet; and her cracked
lieels were stiffened by perpetual clefts." Fig. 54 is from
the grand temple of Thebes, and of the time of one of
the Rameses of the twentieth dynasty. The differences
at present existing between the various races of mankind
were apparently just as great three thousand five hundred
years ago as they are to-day ; and, if we come no nearer

Figs. 52, 53. — Ancient Egyptian representation of the races of mankind, about
3,400 years ago. The left-hand figure is black, representing the negro. The
right-hand figure is white, representing the Caucasian. (After Champollion.)

to unity in three thousand live hundred years, how much
farther shall we travel back before we discover the one
black, yellow, brown, or white source from which all our
present races flowed?

i6o

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

The Egyptians were acquainted with negroes, as we
find from their documents, nearly four thousand three
hundred years ago.^ RawHnson acknowledges that Baby-
lonian monuments alojie carry back the origin of BabyJon
to 3,905 years before the present time.^ All historians
agree that the earliest civilization of
Babylonia was a Turanian one : hence
the difference between the people living
there at that time and the Egyptians
must have been greater than that between
the modern Chaldean and the modern
Egyptian. That the Caucasian race ex-
isted as early as this, no scholar will dis-
pute ; and we are now back five hundred
years farther into the past, with Egyptian,
Ethiopian, Turanian, and Caucasian as
distinct, to say the least, as they are to-
day. Egyptologists have demonstrated

Egyptian repre- ^^^^ ^^^^ dwcllcr in the Nilotic valley was
sentation of a ne- j^g much au Egyptian five thousand years

ago as he was at the commencement of
the Christian era, while the oldest Chaldean monuments
represent a people in the valley of the Euphrates as dif-
ferent from them as they were in the days of Nebuchad-
nezzar.

Lieut. Smith, the ethnologist, gives us his opinion on

1 Types of Mankind, p. 181, 2 Origin of Nations, p. 41.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

i6i

the subject of the fixity of races in the following words :
" It may, then, be fairly said, that unmixed races, from
the most remote historical time (nearly four thousand
years), have preserved their distinguishing marks amid all
the supposed causes of change, and may be considered
permanent. The Ethiopian (negro) can no more
change his skin than can the leopard his spots." ^

Fig. 55. — Ancient Negro.

Geology enables us to travel much farther into the past
than history. Back to that strange time known as the
glacial period, or ice age, we go ; and in caves covered
with a deposit of mud, laid down when three-fourths of
Europe was under water, and icebergs sailed over the
places now occupied by some of the most intelligent
people of the planet, we find the remains of man. There
can be no doubt that this was many thousand years back

* Natural History of the Human Species, p. 87.

l62

IS DARWIN RIGHT?

of the historical period, and it becomes a very interesting
question : Do these remains indicate that human beings
were more closely aUied to each other then than now ?
Are there any indications that we are arriving at the one
trunk, from which all the branches of humanity grew?
On the contrary, we have no living people on the globe,
whose heads manifest as great diversity as the skulls of

Fig. 56. — The Neanderthal Skull. The upper is a side view; the lower,

a front view.

these most ancient human beings show. The Neanderthal
skeleton, found under a bed of loam in a cave sixty feet
above the River Dussel, in the Neanderthal, when first
exhibited at Bonn in 1857, impressed all naturalists that
saw it with its brute-like characteristics. Professor Schaff-
hausen declared that it was the most brute-like of all
known human skulls. When Professor Huxley saw a cast

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MA A.

163

of the skull, he said it was the most ape-like skull he had
ever beheld.^ Lye'll says the outline of the Neanderthal
skull shows a nearer resemblance "to that of a chimpan-
zee than had ever been observed before in any human
cranium." (Fig. 56.) Skulls resembling it have been
found in Cochrane's Cave, Gibraltar ; at Borreby, in Den-
mark, and in the Rhine loess; and there can be little
doubt that these skulls present to us the brain develop-

FiG. 57. — The Engis Skull.

ment of an extremely brutal race that occupied Europe
ages before history or even tradition was born.

We have, however, other skulls, belonging apparently
to a period as ancient as this, which, although not equal
to the average skulls of the best living races, would not
be out of place even on the shoulders of Europeans
to-day. The Engis skull (Fig. 57), found in a cave near

^ Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 79.

l64 IS DAKVVJN RIGHT 1

Liege in Belgium, with the remains of many extinct
animals, and generally regarded as ancient as the Nean-
derthal man, is so superior in its characteristics, that
Professor Huxley says it is " a fair, average human skull,
which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might
have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage," —
from which we may learn that the Engis skull does not
much depart from the average type of living skulls, and
we may also learn that Professor Huxley is not a phre-
nologist ; for the same kind of a skull never held the
brains of a philosopher and the thoughtless brains of a
savage. The Mentone, Cro-magnon, and other ancient
skulls, are of fair development, and show the existence
in Europe, at a very early period, of a race at least equal
in mental endowment to that of the best savage races
now upon the globe.

The following is from Professor Paul Broca, in an arti-
cle on the remains of man found in the caves of Peri-
gord, with the remains of the mammoth and other
extinct animals : " The quaternary race of Dordogne
(Cro-magnon) differs from the quaternary race of the
Belgian caves (Fig. 58) as much at least as dissimilar
modern races differ one from another. The contrast is
complete, not only when we look at the conformation
and volume of the head, but also if we look at the form
and dimensions of the bones of the hmbs." ^ But if

^ American Journal of Science, July, 1869.

0R\ THE ORIGIN- OF MAN. i6

races of men at that early time existed, who were as far
or even farther apart than any hving races, how much
farther back shall we go before these differences shall
vanish?

Buchner says, "It is true that some very ancient
human skeletons, or parts of skeletons, have been found,
which must have belonged to comparatively large and

Fig. 58. — The Furfooz Skull, found in a Belgian Bone Cave by Dupont.

very muscular men, such, for example, as the skeleton
of the famous Neanderthal man, and the human bones
recently found by M. Louis Lartet in one of the caverns
of Perigord (Les Eyzies), and probably belonging to
the period of the mammoth, which seem to indicate a
rude, but strong and muscular race of men, with an
approximation in the structure of the bones to the type
of the apes, and with prognathous jaws, but nevertheless
with a comparatively good development of the brain.

1 66 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

On the other hand, most of the discoveries of the so-
called quaternary period indicate a small race, with a
narrow skull and prognathous jaws, and therefore of
a type resembling that of the negroes or Mongols. In
the most ancient period of the mammoth and cave-bear,
the men, according to Broca, were not of large stature,
had a narrow head, with a retreating forehead and
oblique jaws, in fact, a general conformation of the
body such as is now approximately met with in the low^
est races of Austraha and New Caledonia." ^ When we
find the racial lines diverging for certainly more than
ten thousand years, how can we believe that at any time
still farther back they will ever unite ?

When we come over to our own continent, we find
the Calaveras skull, associated with extinct animals, and
belonging to the pliocene period, the oldest of all known
human skulls, pronounced by Professor Whitney to have
a strong resemblance to the present Digger Indians of
California. Castelnau found in the caves of the Andes,
associated with extinct animals, skulls resembling those
of the ancient Peruvian type, but in which the charac-
teristics of that type were greatly exaggerated. So that
the New World unites with the Old in declaring, that, as
we go backward in time, there are no evidences that the
races ever came from a single pair, but must have arisen
from many widely differing individuals. But, if humanity

* Man, Past, Present, and Future, p. 50.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 167

Started from different sources, the originals must have
been ape-Uke brutes. And what should have caused the
differences between them? The differences existing in
still more remote ancestors, is the most reasonable
answer. Without tracing their pedigree still farther into
the past, we may ask, what caused these diversified apes
to advance along independent lines to humanity? Did
unguided variation operate simultaneously on each spe-
cies of ape from which mankind has descended? and
was it equally successful in all of them in enlarging the
brain, expanding the forehead, lengthening the lower
limbs, shortening the upper, causing the jaws to retreat,
the hair to disappear from the body, and the stooping
brute generally to advance to the upright man? I think
the most pronounced Darwinian would shrink from
acknowledging this. But, if not, we seem driven to the
conclusion that along independent lines, by virtue of
inherent force, and, as I believe, spiritual direction, life
advanced till it was represented by various simian types,
which fathered the different races of men now living
upon our globe.

LANGUAGE.

Our ability to communicate ideas by language is, to my
mind, an indication of man's spiritual origin. The first
being who said bamba could not by the utterance have
increased his chances of survival over his semi-simian

1 68 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

comrades. How, then, came language, that wonderfully
complex instrument for the transmission of thought,
which we find to be the property of even every savage ?

The existence of one language would be difficult
enough to account for, on the ground of mere variation,
natural selection, and sexual selection ; but the difficulty
is very greatly increased, when we find that there are
many distinct languages, and that, the farther we are able
to trace them back, the more distinct they appear to be,
indicating that languages sprang up independently among
various people by virtue of inherent tendency.

Most of the tongues of modern Europe bear a strong
resemblance to each other ; but, as Miiller says, " By com-
paring Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Slavonic, we
discover that they were originally derived from some lan-
guage older still, of which they were the dialects. This
language has been called Aryan ; and it can be proved
that the people who spoke it, so long before all written
history, led the life of agricultural nomads." The Sans-
crit, the ancient language of India, which was spoken
for centuries before the time of Solomon, is but a dialect
of the same ancient Aryan language, which was spoken
on the plateaus of Central Asia when Europe was in the
stone age. Indo-European is the name given to the
family of languages derived from the Aryan, from the fact
that they are spoken generally throughout Europe and in
India.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 169

A very different family of languages is found in Syria,
Arabia, and generally in the south-western corner of Asia
from the banks of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean,
called the Semitic, from the notion that the descendants
of Shem spoke these languages ; a better name by which
it is sometimes called is Syro- Arabian. The Aramaic,
Chaldean, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic languages are
members of this family. This is no mushroom family.
George Smith, who translated the Chaldean inscriptions in
arrow-headed characters, found in the mounds of Assyria,
says, " The Izdubar legends, containing the story of the
flood, were probably written in the south of the country
and as early as 2000 B. C. These legends were, how-
ever, traditions before they were committed to writing,
and were common in some form to all the country."
As long ago as four thousand years, the multitudes in the
valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris were speaking a
Syro-Arabian language, and their scholars were inscribing
it on clay tablets to transmit to the future their thoughts
and the story of their deeds. We can readily compare
these ancient records with the equally ancient Sanscrit
records, written in an Indo-European language ; and, if
these two families of languages are branches of the same
linguistic trunk, we ought to find them approaching
nearer to it in four thousand years : but there is no
evidence of this kind. Greek, German, and Sanscrit,
which branched off from the original Aryan many thou-

lyo IS DARWIN RIGHT?

sand years ago, still show clearly their relationship ; and
certainly, if the Indo-European and Syro- Arabian lan-
guages came from the same original source, we ought to
find some evidence of this in the similarity of their words
or in their grammatical structure. But we do not find
such evidence. Professor W. D. Whitney says, "The
whole fabric and style of these two families of language
is so discordant, that any theory which assumes their joint
development out of the radical stage, the common growth
of their grammatical systems, is wholly excluded. . . .
Against so deep and pervading a discordance, the surface
analogies hitherto brought to light have no convincing
weight." ^ If the Syro- Arabian languages ever came
from the same trunk as the Indo-European languages,
it must have been before the grammar of these languages
was formed ; and the grammar of a language is its soul.

Alfred Maury says all the Syro- Arabian languages " dis-
tinguish themselves sharply from the Indo-European lan-
guages. They possess neither the same grammatical
system, nor the same verbal roots."

Sayce is of the same opinion : he says, " The class of
languages nearest akin in appearance to the Aryan is the
Semitic ; and here, if anywhere, upon the received the-
ory " (that is, of all languages being derived from one)
" we should expect to find the most convincing proofs of
relationship. On the contrary, every thing is against it.

^ Language and the Study of Language, p. 307.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 171

The structure of the language, the phonology of the
speech, the conception of the grammar, the character of
the lexicon, alike forbid the supposition." ^

Older than both of these, in its written form at least, is
the Nilotic family, chief member of which is the Egyp-
tian language, related to tongues that were once spoken in
the North of Africa, in fact, from the Nile to the Canary
Islands, and perhaps over a wnde region now under the
Atlantic Ocean. We have documents written in this lan-
guage that are, in all probability, five thousand years old.
The Syro- Arabian and Nilotic languages being geographi-
cal neighbors for many thousands of years, it is not sur-
prising to learn that there are some resemblances between
some of their words ; but there is little doubt that the
Egyptian language was a spontaneously formed, original
tongue, much more distinct from the Arabic, Hebrew,
and Sanscrit four thousand years ago, than it was in the
time of Cambyses. " Egypt has been literally, for many
thousands of years, the football of foreign conquerors ;
and her primordial language became infiltrated from age
to age with Arabic, Persian, Greek, Libyan, Latin, and
words of other tongues, known to us only at a later stage
of development ; but when these exotic injecta are ab-
stracted, there remains, nevertheless, a stone-recorded
vernacular, possessing all the marks of originality, and in
itself totally distinct from the utmost circumference of
Asiatic languages."- Even Rawlinson tells us that

» Principles of Comparative Philology, p. 102. 2 Types of Mankind, p. 234.

172 IS DAR WIN RIGHT?

" although in some respects it presents resemblances to
the class of tongues known as Semitic, yet in its main
characteristics it stands separate and apart, being simpler
and ruder than any knowm form of Semite speech, and
having analogies which connect it on the one hand with
Chinese, and on the other with the dialects of Central
Africa." ^

The Bask language, spoken by about three-quarters of
a million people, who dwell among the Pyrenees, in the
North of Spain, is like a lone island in the midst of a
boundless ocean. There is no language with which we
are acquainted that stands so much alone. Slight analo-
gies have been traced between it and the language spoken
by the Finns, and in some respects it resembles the
American tongues ; but it is totally distinct from the
Aryan, Semitic, and Egyptian tongues, and as far as we
can judge has always been. It is probably the only living
representative of a family of tongues spoken throughout
Europe before the Aryan conquerors seized the country,
and drove the darker-skinned and inferior inhabitants into
the mountains and most inhospitable regions.

We have found, then, four totally distinct languages,
as far as we can judge, independently developed. But
the Chinese language is certainly distinct from all four.
" A distinguished historian and philologist, in comparing
the languages of the extreme East with those of the Aryan

' Origin of Nations, p. 198.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

173

group, says that ' if the planets whose physical constitu-
tion resembles that of the earth are inhabited by organized
beings hke ourselves, we may assert that the history and
languages of those planets do not differ more from ours,
than do the history and language of the Chinese.' " ^
Alfred Maury is right when he says, " The style of Gene-
sis no more resembles that of the Chinese Kmgs, than
the language of the Rig-veda approaches that which the
hieroglyphics have preserved for us." ^

There are at least from eight to ten root-languages on
our planet, that we have the best of reason to believe
have come into existence as naturally as poems have
been made in all those languages. Poetry never came
by natural selection, nor do I believe it ever came by
sexual selection, which would be much more probable.
• It never came in various countries by being imitated
from some one in which it had been miraculously
planted. The ideal thinker blossoms in poetry spontane-
ously, and hence the poems of all languages differ as the
languages in which they are written differ.

There are, of course, resemblances between all the
languages of the globe, some of the phonic elements
entering into the composition of all ; but this no more
indicates their original unity than the resemblances we
find in the voices of the birds indicate that they learned

1 Buchner's Man, Past, Present, and Future.
* Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 28.

174 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

their songs from some original feathered singer. As
Agassiz justly observes, "There is no ornithologist who
ever watched the natural habits of birds and their notes,
who has not been surprised at the similarity of intonation
of the notes of closely allied species, and the greater dif-
ference between the notes of birds belonging to different
genera and families. The cry of the birds of prey are
alike unpleasant and rough in all ; the song of all the
thrushes is equally sweet and harmonious, and modulated
upon similar rhythms, and combined in similar melodies ;
the chit of all titmice is loquacious and hard; the
quack of the duck is alike nasal in all. But who ever
thought that the robin learned his melody from the
mocking-bird, or the mocking-bird from any other spe-
cies of thrush? Who ever fancied that the field-crow
learned his cawing from the raven or jackdaw? Cer-
tainly no one at all acquainted with the natural history
of birds. And why should it be different with men?
Why should not the different races of men have origi-
nally spoken distinct languages, as they do at present,
differing in the same proportions as their organs of
speech are variously modified? and why should not
these modifications in their turn be indicative of primi-
tive differences among them?"^

If languages did come into existence thus spontane-
ously and independently, it must have been by virtue of

* Types of Mankind, p. 28a.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 175

an innate tendency in human beings leading to their
production. A chirping organ has been detected in the
insects of the Devonian, say thirty milhon years ago ; yet
among all the variations that might have taken place
during that immense period, and that must have taken
place for Darwinism to be true, not a step beyond simple
stridulation has yet been made. Our crickets chirp as
the Devonian insects did before the coal of Pennsylva-
nia was laid down. The quadrumana have existed since
the eocene tertiary, but the monkeys are as destitute of
language now as they were three million years ago. In
the case of man, what should have caused at least eight
or ten dumb animals, and their descendants since the
miocene period, independently to form languages for
the expression of thought, all well adapted to the pur-
pose, though differing widely from each other? Why
should all the races of men develop languages, and all
other beings fail? There is nothing in the history of
languages that would indicate that they were formed by
the operation of variation and natural selection ; while
many facts point to the action of an innate tendency in
humanity, forming languages as tendency and spiritual
direction had previously formed the men that needed
them for their further development.

176 /S DARWIN RIGHT?

TENDENCY TO BEAUTY.

The tendency to beauty throughout nature also points
to a spiritual cause underlying the operations of the
universe. The face of a Hottentot may be symmetrical,
but we cannot call it beautiful; so that, in addition to
symmetry, there is an added glory which nature's works
frequently possess, that must be accounted for. It seems
probable, that, if all surrounding conditions were at all
times favorable, all things would be beautiful. Winter
showers upon us beautiful crystals of snow, because the
condition of the aqueous vapor and the temperature of
the atmosphere are such as to allow the tendency toward
the beautiful to operate. Quartz in shapeless masses
possesses few of the elements of beauty ; but, when crys-
taUized from solutions in which the silicious particles are
free to move as beauty directs, they form crystals whose
beauty attracts even the most uncultivated eye. The
mineral kingdom, for beauty of color and form, is not
surpassed even by the vegetable kingdom ; and yet selec-
tion, in the Darwinian sense, had nothing to do with the
production of that color and form. When looking at
the productions of the mineral kingdom, we may apos-
trophize beauty in the language of the poet Thomson : —

" At thee the ruby lights its deepening glow,
And with a waving radiance inward flames ;

OJ^, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. i 7 7

From thee the sapphire, solid ether, takes
Its hue cerulean ; and, of evening tinct,
The purple-streaming amethyst is thine.
With thy own smile the yellow topaz burns;
Nor deeper verdure dyes the robe of spring,
When first she gives it to the southern gale,
Than the green emerald shows."

Deep in the briny ooze the euplectella forms her spun
glass basket. There is no variety in its color, but for
beauty of form it is not surpassed by the production of
any organized being that is known to us. Why should
the natural tendency to symmetry and beauty be consid-
ered sufficient for the production of this, and natural
selection and sexual selection be called in to account for
the plumage of the birds of paradise? The shells that
are the habitation of the deep-sea mollusks vie in beauty
of color with the plumage of tropical birds : yet selection
could never have wielded the brush that laid on their
lovely dyes. The soul of beauty, that spans the sky with
rainbow arches, that adorns with crystals the geode's
" hollow globe," that makes the marble halls of caverns,
where darkness and solitude forever reign, more beautiful
than kingly palaces, — this, in my opinion, infinitely
more than sexual selection, made the humming bird a
flying jewel, adorned the birds of paradise with their
waving plumes and exquisite colors, moulded the human
form, and will, in time, make every human being fair as

178 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

our dream of an angel, and worthy of the title, a child
of God.

HtnVIAN FACULTIES.

Another pointer is the €xiste?ice of the essentially hu-
man faculties in man. Phrenology as taught by Dr.
J. R. Buchanan is as much a true science as geology
taught by Sir Charles Lyell, and can be much more
readily demonstrated. This science reveals in man the
existence of reverence, modesty, benevolence, chastity,
integrity or conscientiousness, spirituality, and other
essentially human faculties, which it is inconceivable to
believe could ever have been produced by the operation
of undirected variation and natural selection. How
much more likely would an ape be to survive, who was
modest, reverential, conscientious, and benevolent? In
the relentless struggle for life among brutes, their exist-
ence would but have rendered him a prey to the less
scrupulous and the more vicious, and any variation in
that direction would have produced a similar effect in pro-
pordon to the amount of that variation. Conscientious-
ness in such an animal w^ould have led him to abstain
from the food which another had secured ; benevolence,
to aid another at the expense of his own well-being ;
while reverence and spirituality would have tended to
destroy that selfishness, without which, among brutes,
death would be inevitable.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. i 79

Vvhat, then, could have produced the incipient varia-
tions which led to the formation of these dominant fac-
ulties in man, which have led him, not unfrequently, to
the dungeon with joy, and to the burning pile with tri-
umph? If we could even conceive of the germs of
these faculties appearing in the brutes that fathered the
man, or in primitive man himself, what could have
caused them to increase, as they must have done to
attain their present development, when their exercise at
that time must have made the individual a prey to his
more brutal neighbors?

The existence of these faculties in man points to a spir-
itual type, — the perfect man, toward which the human
race has been moving from its start, and that is destined
eventually to be perfectly embodied in man, when the
fruit of the tree of life is fully ripe.

SPIRITUAL FACULTIES.

Another pointer, and perhaps the most significant of
all, is the existence of spiritual faculties in man, for
which mere variation, inheritance, and natural selection
can never account. If the physical eye could be ac-
counted for by natural selection, there would still remain
the much more difficult task, that of accounting for the
existence of the spiritual eye. It is absolutely certain
that a great many persons — I have known as many as
thirty or forty — can at times see objects with the eyes

i8o ZS- DARWIN RIGHT?

closed, as well or better than they can with them open,
can see in the absolute darkness as readily as in the light,
and thousands of miles off as well as near at hand.
Deleuze, the well-known French magnetizer and author,
says, " In somnambulists there are developed faculties of
which we are deprived in the ordinary state ; such as see-
ing without the aid of the eyes, hearing without the aid
of the ears, seeing at a distance, reading the thoughts." ^
Henry George Atkinson, joint author with Harriet Mar-
tineau of the Atkinson and Martineau Letters, writes :
" I had once a very remarkable patient, a somnambule,
who, with the eyes closed, could easily read any writing I
gave her. She read from the top of her head, or when
placed on her hand, or, in fact, from any part of her body ;
and it was to be noticed in this case, that, the more tightly
you pressed upon her eyes, the more clearly she could
see." ^ Professor Weinholt in describing somnambulism
says, the sleep-walker " reads printed and written papers,
writes as well and correctly as in his waking state, and
performs many other operations requiring light and the
natural use of eyes. All these actions, however, are per-
formed by the somnambulist in complete darkness, and
with his eyes firmly closed." ^ Dr. Gregory, professor of
chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, says, "The

^ Instruction in Animal Magnetism, p. 185.

2 Atkinson and Martineau Letters, p. 104.

3 Mesmerism in India, Esdaile, p. 248.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN, iSi

clairvoyant can often perceive objects wliich are wrapped
up in paper, or enclosed in boxes or otlier opaque recep-
tacles. Thus I have seen objects described, as to form,
color, surface markings, down to minute flaws and
chipped edges, when enclosed in paper, cotton, paste-
board boxes, wooden boxes, boxes of papier-mache, and
of metal. I have further known letters minutely described,
the address, postmarks, seal, and even the contents, read
off when the letters were enclosed in thick envelopes or
boxes." ^ "Vision," says M. Teste, "through the closed
eyelids, and through opaque bodies, is not only a real
fact, but a \Qxy fj-equent fact. There is no magnetizer
who has not observed it twenty times ; and I know at
the present day, in Paris alone, a very great number of
somnambulists who might furnish proofs of it." ^

In the report of a committee of physicians, appointed
by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris, I find the
following : " We have seen two somnambulists distin-
guish with closed eyes the objects placed before them ;
they have designated, without touching them, the color
and name of cards ; they have read words written, or
lines from a book. This phenomenon has occurred even
when the eyelids were kept closed by the fingers."

The distinguished Parisian professor of medicine, Ros-
tan, in the " Dictionnaire de Medecine " remarks, " There

1 Animal Magnetism, p. 37.

2 Quoted by Bush in Mesmer and Swedenborg, p. 107.

1 82 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

are few facts better demonstrated than clairvoyance ; " and
he then tells us how he tested the clairvoyance of a
somnambule by going into the dark, and turning the
hands of his watch round, when the somnambulist in the
dark accurately stated the hour and minute indicated by
the pointers. This she did repeatedly without a mistake.'

The men who give their testimony in favor of clair-
voyance are as well able to know the truth of what they
state, and are as worthy of credence, as the material
scientists who receive their testimony with an incredulous
smile ; and the faculty in man by which it is accomplished
can never be accounted for by unguided variation, in-
heritance, and natural selection. The persons who have
possessed these faculties have been in nearly all ages the
persecuted and despised ; many have been placed in luna-
tic-asylums because they were regarded as insane, and
not unfrequently been burnt for wizards and witches.
Clairvoyance is the appearance in a few of what will
probably be the heritage of all, by virtue of that indwell-
ing spirit which carries the human race to its goal.

The existence of the spirit of man after death is now
scientifically demonstrated,- but no man will claim that
natural selection is the cause of that existence. What is
it, then, that perpetuates man's existence after death seizes

1 Dr. Edwin Lee's Animal Magnetism, p. 104.

* See the Scientific Basis of Spiritualism, by Epes Sargent ; and Zbllner's Tran-
scendental Physics.

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 183

the body, so that our friends can return and give us as
demonstrative evidence of their existence as they did
while Hving among us ? It is evident that there must have
been something infinitely more potent at work than Dar-
winians have yet presented, to bring into existence man,
the spirit.

Much of the improvement of humanity in beauty has
been attributed to sexual selection. A man selects the
most beautiful woman for a conjugal companion, a woman
selects the most perfect man : some of their offspring
advance in beauty, and, the more beautiful, the more
likely they are to become parents. Suppose it true, —
though it could have had but little influence in the in-
fancy of the race, when rape was almost universal, when
every woman was a mother, and every man a father, —
whence came that appreciation of beauty, which led the
man to choose the most beautiful woman, the woman the
most perfect man ? For the man to choose a more beau-
tiful woman than he had previously seen, — and without
this the race could not advance in beauty without tend-
ency leading in that direction, — he must have had an
ideal of beauty more perfect than he had ever seen em-
bodied ; and this, variation and natural selection do not
account for. This is, in fact, as difficult to account for,
to say the least, as the beauty itself. There is a sense of
the beautiful in all of us, as there was in our savage fore-
fathers, more perfect than any embodiment of it that the

1 84 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

world has seen. Many an artist can paint a more perfect
face than nature has yet been able to produce on this
planet. Whence comes that sense of a beauty more per-
fect than eye has ever beheld? The most moral man
has a sense of moral perfection much in advance of that
which he lives, or that he has ever seen expressed in
the Hfe of any one. Priests and poets preach and sing
better than they live. Whence comes this sense of a life
superior to all that we have known ? Are not our souls
portions of the universal soul, as every drop in the ocean
is a part of the mass the moon heaves? The grand
secret of the ages, hidden from all lower beings, is re-
vealed to man ; and we can see the goal toward which
life has been running for so long, and to which it must
arrive, — the perfect man.

We, too, are worlds, more wonderful than the ponder-
ous globes that swim in the solar sea. Some are in the
heated stage ; the boiling passions have not subsided,
and the heart is a fiery hell. Others are in the granitic
stage, hard, flinty, dry, and selfish. Some have advanced
to life and beauty ; but all are imperfect. If the infinite
spirit gave to the planet all those ages of the past to
develop man, will there not be given him time to develop
to perfect angelhood ? If out of the fiery lava man has
been developed, can we imagine any thing too great or
too good for even the lowest and meanest man to
become ? The man of the mammoth period was superior

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 185

to the savage of the cave-bear epoch ; the lake-dwellers
of Switzerland were highly civilized compared with the
occupants of the Dordogne caves, and the ancient Greeks
and Romans were many strides in advance of them.
There is no need for despondency, still less for despair.
The stars are unmoved when the earthquake rocks a
continent ; and they shine undimmed, though clouds for
weeks obscure the sky. The canker-worms sweep from
our apple-trees every leaf; and there they stand, each an
image of desolation, amid the verdure and bloom of
early summer. An ignorant spectator might say, 'Your
apple-trees are dead." A few weeks, however, find them
green as ever : they instantly commence to repair dam-
ages, and, in the steady purpose to produce fruit, never
falter for an instant. So Nature, never to be balked,
started ages ago to make men ; and despite of heaving
earthquakes, boiling oceans, sinking continents, ravaging
tornadoes, devouring monsters, and life-destroying cata-
clysms, here we are, the mighty masters of the world, and
here our race will probably be for millions of millenni-
ums.

And what she has done for the race is an indication of
what she will do for the individual. This universe is no
relentless mill, whose ponderous jaws only open that they
may receive and hopelessly crush us, while we are to rest
satisfied because our loss is to be the gain of our de-
scendants. All this work during the ages was not done

1 86 IS DARWIN RIGHT?

merely to produce man, and give him infinite desires that
sickness should mock, and death extinguish. Why is life
so sweet, and annihilation so terrible? Why should
millions of ages have been spent to produce a being to
whom future existence is so desirable, and then deny him
what he of all the world only craves? There is a life
after death : the past teaches it, the present declares it.
Not without reason did the savage hunter of the long ago
dream of a land to which the departed had gone ; not to
mock him did the eternal spirit place the spiritual intui-
tion in his soul. What he dreamed, we have had demon-
strated : he had the instinct, we have the knowledge.
Science may seem to rob religion of its charms, but it is
destined to restore them a thousand-fold. As it rises to
the zenith like a sun, faith in miracle will depart like a
fog that the morning drinks up ; but confidence in the
universal, beneficent, and intelligent operation of law
will take its place. The belief in irremediable woe for
any portion of humanity will vanish ; and in its place will
come to all the assurance of conscious, continued exist-
ence in a superior condition of being. As out of the
ashes of a burnt-up world, in consequence of that divine
tendency which has enabled life to conquer all enemies,
to form garments of loveliness out of the shroud of death,
and rainbows of hope out of the tears of despair, there
has come the fragrance of the violet, the beauty of the
rose, the song of the poet, the lore of the philosopher, a

OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 187

mother's love, and a martyr's virtue, — so, in the apparently
infinite future that lies before the human soul, by that
same divine tendency, the vilest criminals, " the deepest
sunk in guilt and sorrow," may rise and climb from
height to height of goodness and bliss, ever looking up-
ward, while, from still untrodden heights, a purer and
more perfect ideal shall forever beckon them on.

INDEX.

Abbeville, gravel beds of, 87.

spear from, 87.
Adam, creation of, 112.
Adamic protozoan, 112.
Agassiz, on origin of languages, 174.

on human brain, 57.
Alps, flasks taken to, by Tyndall, 24.
Amblyopsis, 113.
Amblystoma, developed from axolotl,

143-145-
Amoeba, simplicity of structure of, 13.
Amphibians, linking forms, 62.
Amphioxus, a linking form, 62.
Anatomical similarity, 58-61.

between man and monkey, 60.
Ancient negro, 161.
Angel who set man on the pillar, 104.
Animal layer, 54.
Animals in high mountain regions, 33.

alike to the eye in their egg state, 47.
Anthozoa, not created, 100.
Apes, skulls of, 92.
Apple-seeds, 108.

Apteryx, rudimentary wing bones of, 69.
Archeopteryx, a linking form, 63, 105.
Archeopteryx macroura, 106.
Armadillo, 70, 71.

Atkinson and Martineau letters, 180.
Australia, plants of, compared with those

of Europe, 137.
Australian, brain capacity of, 64.
Axolotl, changed to amblystoma, 143-
145-

Bacteria in closed flasks, 21, 22,
Bakewell's sheep, variation in, 28.
Baldwin, on age of Egyptian civUiza->

tion, 80, 81.
Bask language, 172.
Bastian, Dr., experiments with sealed

flasks, 20.
Begonia, 113.
Blind fish of Mammoth Cave, 35.

of Wyandotte Cave, 37.
" Blind laws," 43.
Boas and pythons, rudimentary limbs

of, 69.
Brain, human, symmetry of, 40.
Brain-capacity of quadrumana and man,

64.
of eocene mammals, 129, 130.
Braintree, trilobite of, 139.
Broca, Paul, on physical characteristics

of early man, 94.
on remains of man in caves of Peri-

gord, 164.
Bronze age, 82, 83.
Brutal characteristics of man, 91-97.

Cabbage, in the West Indies, 33.
Calaveras skull, 166.
Cambrian age, organic beings of, 122.
Canioni, Professor, experiments of, 21.
Cape of Good Hope, plants of, 137.
Carabid beetle of Mammoth Cave, 36.
Carbonate of lime, cry-stallizalion of,

23. 24-

189

190

INDEX.

Carboniferous age, organic beings of,

126, 127.
Carter, Dr., on Naulette jaw, 95.
Caucasian, brain capacity of, 64.
Cauliflower and cabbage, 33, 34.
Cavy, 70, 71.
Cell division, 52.
Cervical vertebrae of man and lower

animals, 60.
Chain-coral, 140.

Changes produced by impregnation, 51.
Chinese language, 172.
Chlorostoma fimbrale, 141.
Civilization, age of, in Egypt, 80.
Clairvoyance, 180.

Clark, Professor, on production of in-
fusoria, 19.

on egg resemblances, 47.

on protozoa, 61.
Clay stones, 40.
Clupea humilis, 153, 154.
Cod, reproductive powers of, 42.
Cohesion, operation of, 12, 13.
Conditions, improving since dawn of

life, 38.
Confucius, 157.

Crystallization, on a window-pane, 12.
Crystals, formation of, 23.

repairs of, 24.
Ctenomys, 71.
Cyclonema bilix, 141.

Dar^vin on first living form, 16.

on organic forms on Galapagos Is-
lands, 74, 75.
on life's commencement, 111-113.
on origination of new species, 148,
149.
Darwinian theory gives no clew to prog-
ress, 131.
Degradation of man, if created by mira-
cle, 102.
Deltas of Mississippi and Ganges, 77.
Dendrite on slate, 13.
on chert, 13.
on sienite, 13.

Devonian, fishes of, 73,

age, organic beings of, 125.
Dinornis, 37.
Dinosaurs in Jurassic and cretaceous

beds, 62.
Documents indicating man's antiquity,

79-
Dogs, little variation of, 150, 151.
Draper, J. W., on production of life, 23.
on animals in egg state, 47.

Earth, age of, 77.

Egypt, a flourishing nation in Abra-
ham's time, 79.

civilization of, 82,

stone age of, 82.
Egyptian representation of races of
men, 158, 159.

of negress, 158, 160.

language, 171.
Elephants in France and England, 86.
Elm, reproductive powers of, 42.
Embryo, human, 56.
Er.gis skull, 163.
Eohippus, 68, 134.
Eozoon, 74.

Euplectella, beauty of, 177.
Europe during stone age, 86.
Excrescences on body of child, 30, 31.
E.\ternal surroundings, powerless to
create, 38.

Factory, for making men out of granite,

117.
Fairies, babies, men, 44.
Fingers of crinoids, 59.
Formation of animal layer, 53.
Fossils, confined to limited areas, 98, 99.

of Potsdam sandstone, 99.
Frere Abbe, on ancient European skulls.

93-
Frog, metamorphoses of, 48.
Furfooz skull, 165.

Galapagos Islands, animals and plants
of| 74, 75-

INDEX.

191

Garfield, discussion with, 4, 5.
Gauls, described by Csesar, 31.
Geological order of development, 49.

succession, 72-74.
Glacial period, man in, 86.
Gosse, Philip Henry, on infusoria, 18.
Grasshopper, wingless, of Mammoth
Cave, 36.

of Wyandotte Cave, 36.
Gravitation, operation of, 12.
Gregory, Dr., on clairvoyance, 180.
Greyhounds, sent from England to Mex-
ico, 33.

Hands of monkeys, 59.

Hawks and eagles, cared for, 43.

Hereditary transmission, 30-32,

Hesperornis, 64.

Hipparion, 67, 68.

Hooker, Dr., on variation, 27.

Horses, de\eloped along many lines, 69.

Hottentot Venus, 156.

Human anatomy, studied from skeleton

of monkey, 60.
Human character of embryo, when es-
tablished, 56.

faculties, 178.

ovum, description of, 50.
Humboldt, on age of pyramids, 80.
Huxley, opinions of, about production
of life, 22.

on cause of variation, 131, 132.

on Engis skull, 164.
Hydra, grows from fragment, 113.

Ichthyornis, 64.

Incisors, absence of in ruminants, 66.

Ideal, followed by nature, 135.

Indo-European languages, 168.

Infusoria, 18-26.

Insects, of Mammoth Cave, 36.

of Devonian, chirping organ of, 175.
Insular organic resemblance, 64.
Intelligence, necessary to produce man,
no.

Jaws, human, of ape-like form, 95.
Jaw of Arcy-sur-aube, 96.

found at Ipswich, 96.

of La Naulette, 95.
Jew's nose, 30.
Jurassic period, organic beings of, 128.

Kent's Cave, time of occupancy by man,

86.

La Naulette jaw, 95.
Labyrinthodon, track of, 59.
Language, 167-175.

Indo-European, 168.

Syro-Arabian, 169.
Languages, Nilotic family of, 171.
La Couteur, Col., on variation of wheat

grains, 27.
Lepidosiren, 62.
Leptothrix, 22.

Leslie, J. P., on length of historical
period, 78.

on permanency of type, 151.
Life, distribution of, 9.

abounds where conditions are favora-
ble, 23.
Life after death, 186.
Lime, formation of, 11.
Lingula, ancient and modem compared,

140.
Linking forms, 61-65.
Lion, diseased pelvis of, 46.
Littorina litorea, 141.
Lizards, modified into snakes, 70.
Lyell, writings of, 3.

on cabbage and cauliflower, 33, 34-

on varieties, 34.

on length of historical period, 7S.

Magnetic force, probable action of, 65.
Mammals, fossil, of South America, 71.

of New Zealand, 72.
Mammoth cave, how formed, 35.
Man, rudimentary' organs in. 70.

of spiritual origin, 115-187.

antiquity of, 76, 91.

192

INDEX,

Man, spirit of, survives death, 186.

made out of dust, 98.

created in image of God, loi.

not the result of accident, 109.

produced by intelligent spirit, no.

of the pliocene, 130, 131.

little changed by conditions, 146,
Manward progress of our planet, 116-

133-
Marcel de Serres, on skulls found in

Germany, 93.

Marsupials of Australia, 72.

Maury, Alfred, on language, 170.

Men, in mountain regions, 33.

Mesohippus, 134.

Metamorphosis of animals, 46-58.

Miohippus, 67, 68, 134.

Missing link, 103.

Modification, 32, 39.

Mollusks of Europe and America com-
pared, 139, 140.

Monkeys of Eocene, 130.

Mosquito, metamorphosis of, 47.

M tiller, on Indo-European languages,
168.

Multiplicity of human origins, 155.

Natural law, operation of, 14, 15.

selection, 41.

selection, the gardener not the cre-
ator, 41.
Neanderthal skull, 162.
Negro, ancient, 161.
New Zealand, mammals of, 72.

wingless birds of, 72.

seaweeds of, 137.
Nilotic family of languages, 171.
Notornis, 37.
Nucleus, 52.
Nucleolus, 52.

Objections to man's natural origin, 97,

no.
Odontopteryx, 106.
Opalina, a linking form, 62.
Organic distribution, 136.

Orohippus, 67, 68, 134.

Our planet, formed by law, 10.

Ornithorhynchus, 63.

Owen, on production of Ufe, 23.

on similarity between skeleton of man
and monkey, 60.

on old coral polyps, 100.

Paleontological resemblance, 70, 71.

Paleolithic age in Europe, 85.

Parent cell, 52.

Pasteur, on production of life, 22.

Pengelly, on Kent's Cave, 86.

Perigord, caverns of, 165.

Persistency of type, 146-155.

Pillar on which man stands, 103.

Platyrrhine monkeys, 70, 71.

Pliocene beds of California, 88.

Pointers indicating man's natural origin,
46-58.

Pointers indicating man's spiritual ori-
gin, 116-187.

Populus decipiens, 152, 153.

Prichard, on ancient Britons, 92.

Primitive trace, description of, 54, 55.

Proteus, 62.

Protohippus, 134.

Protozoa, 61.

Protozoan, Adamic, 112, 113.

Providence, general and special, 42.

Pterodaclyle, 62, 63.

Pyramids, antiquity of, 79, 80.

Quatrefages, on tails of Esquimaux dogs

32-

Rabbits, reproductive powers of, 42.

Race development of animals, 133-136.

Rawlinson, on language, 171.

Red grouse, 42.

Reptiles, true, 62.

Ribot, on heredity, 31.

Roget, on human metamorphosis, 56, 57.

Root languages, number of, 172.

Rostan, on clairvoyance, 182.

Royal Academy of Medicime, 181.

INDEX.

Rudimentary organs, 66.
in horse, 67,
in man, 70.

Salmons of New Zealand, 138.
Salt, crystallization of, 23.
Sassafras, in cretaceous beds, 152.

mirabile, 152.

officinale, 152.
Sayce, on language, 170.
SchafT Hansen, Professor, on primitive

form of human skull, 93.
Schiodte, on blind animals in caves, 34.
Scincidse, 70.

Sea-snails, ancient and modern com-
pared, 140, 141.
See-ma-thsian, 156.
Seps, 70.

Service-tree in Western Virginia, 33.
Seti-Menephtha, tomb of, 157.
Sexual selection, how accounted for, 183.
Shells, of Silurian, 74.

of Cambrian, 74.
Silica, formation of, 11.
Silk-worm, 47, 48.
Skull of Calaveras County, 88-90.
Skulls of ancient Britons, 92.

of Europeans, 93.
Sloth, 70, 71.
Snow flakes, 14.

South Shetland Islands, plants of, 138.
Species, new, formation of, 107, io8.
Spirit of the universe, 109.
Spiritual ideals, 114.

faculties, 179.
Star-fish, digits of, 59.
Stone age, of Europe, 82, 83.

in Switzerland, 83.
Stone spear from Abbeville, 87.
Struggle for existence, 42.
Switzerland in stone age, 83.
Symmetry, 39.

of clay stones, 40.

of diseases, 40.

Tadpole, kept in druggist's store, 37.

Tallness, hereditary, 30.
Tendency, 28-30.

to beauty, 176.
Terra del Fuego, plants of, 136, 137.
Tertiary age, 129, 130.
Teste, M., 181.

Thomson on beauty in mineral king-
dom, 176.
Torulae, 22.
Tradition, 78.

Tree, natural and artificial, 16, 17.
Trilobites of Europe and America com-
pared, 139.
Tyndall, on production of life, 22.

experiments of, 24, 25,

Van Mons, on variation of grape-seeds,

27.
Variation, 26-28.

not a creator, 28.
Vegetative layer, 54.
Vestiges of creation, 3.
Vibriones, 22.
Virginia cherry, 33.
Vitality, law of, 17-26.

Wallace, remarks of, regarding Basti-
an's experiments, 21, 22.
on production of life, 23.
Weapons, on banks of American streams,

87.
Weismann, on change of axolotl, 144,

145-
Whales, true, destitute of teeth, 69.
Whitman, Walt, on man's development,

118, 119.
Whitney, Professor J. D., on Calaveras-

County skull, 88-90.
Whitney, Professor W. D., on language,

170.
Willson, Professor, on ancient Briton,

91,92.
Wingless birds of New Zealand, 37.
Woonsocket, factory of, 117.
Wyman, experiments of, with sealed

flasks, 18, 19.

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